@@howardmao3331 those would make awesome books IMO: imagine dragons dealing with the sort of societal upheaval that occurred in the 1880s or the enlightenment. They would run into populations limits really early and how to deal with it as a race that is effectively immortal would be a fun topic.
Depending on the context, subtlety isn't exactly necessary for a great story. Sauron was anything but subtle. Though it does seem that most people are looking to make everything as morally grey as possible these days.
It's quite interesting, because I'm not much into fantasy reading right now, but every time I think of writing a plot for a RPG game or a short story and compare my idea to other stories I have seen or heard about it really seems to me that the fantastical elements driving the plot seem to have decreased a lot. Although I think it happens more in literature and other mediums than RPGs. I really wonder why.
I feel like this phenomena has a lot to do with the author's confidence level. They will usually start out with a decent fantastical engine, but as the series moves on they tend to trend towards safer and safer decisions, eventually ending up as great story, but with very mundane day to day, with the fantastical elements making a nice backdrop that sets them apart.
I'd like to add to that. In my experience, modern fantasy feels less "magical". More authors lean heavily towards hard magic systems, more authors try and create more "realistic" settings. Nothing wrong with either of those, but I feel like there's an over-reliance on such things. Not enough feeling of wonder and awe, not enough archetypes.
When I studied Creative Writing at college, my school and professors were super against "genre fiction," meaning fantasy, sci-fi, horror, pretty much anything that isn't non-fiction or realistic fiction. We were allowed to delve in "magical realism" a little bit, but no one wanted to because our syllabi pretty much said we'd get a zero if our stories had magic, talking animals, etc. One professor I took near the end of my degree didn't care and told us to write whatever we want and encouraged us to write fantasy and magic. But all of that is to say, I feel like education can play a factor into some of the changes in writing we're experiencing. We were told things like "you aren't popular enough to break the rules" and "fantasy/magic is just a cover up for bad characters and writing." Like what you said about there not being enough narratives being driven by the fantasy and magic. That's exactly what I was taught NOT to do. Everything has to be character-driven, everything in the story has to be pushed forward by the character (because clearly in real life, things don't just happen to people amirite lol). In reality, they should have taught us more about how to balance action-driven and character-driven plots in our narrative instead of just telling us we can't do it, or it's not "serious" writing, or you can learn to write fantasy after you master writing non-fantasy. Getting a degree in creative writing made me more uncertain than ever about writing, in fact lmfao. If anyone's doubting themselves as a writer, just take your time and get to learn who your writer is. And check out Brandon Sanderson's lectures on yotube, they're waaay more valuable than my degree lol!
Coverup for bad writing? No, at least not in my experience. And I read and finish between 300 and 400 books a year if you count rereads. You know what's a coverup for lazy/bad character writing? Rich people. No problem solving or growth as a person when everything can be solved with money.
I dropped out of a creative writing class in part because the textbook called genre fiction boxed cake mix and I just. Fuck my 1000 page world building Bible I guess. Fuck all that research I did on history and societal cause and effect I guess. Also I had to tell a fellow student to never use the term "erection of justice" again.
@@thepinkestpigglet7529 Right, I just hate how dismissive they were of the entirety of "genre writing." Sometimes they would try to be nice about it and say, well no one gets genre right the first time so you have to learn character driven fiction before you can write fantasy. And idk, I need the context for "erection of justice" now XD
@@1Sky1 Sure! I didn't mean actual torture porn, but just fantasy novel where characters go through horrible things (slavery, physical/mental abuse, sometimes even rape or implied rape) just one after the other and the author really seems to linger on the horror of it all in a way that starts to feel a little bit off putting. Especially when done to female characters. Also usually the character comes out the other side more or less just fine-- perpetuating the idea that horrible abuse may actually be good because it "makes us stronger." A lot of fantasy stories have this a little bit (heroes have to face adversity) but it gets tiresome when it's taken too far or becomes too similar to actual torture porn (I'm thinking of the Sword of Truth series here). Related are entire fantasy worlds that are incredibly cynical and basically everyone is just flat out evil or motivated solely by self-interest. It started by making fantasy more "realistic" which is fine but again some works just take it way too far.
@@toychristopher i hear what you're saying. I'm writing my first novel (first anything, really) and i saw myself almost fall into that mindset. Then i thought, "Is that what I want to read?" Nope.
When you read a 14 book series that’s supposed to be all about some reborn dragon, yet there isn’t a single dragon in it except on some dumb farm boy’s arms. :(
The first 6 books in the wheel of time were interesting and entertaining but after that it became stereotypical and I read the whole series it was a torture at the end.
@@bighands69 Dude, I LOVED WOT but lost steam after the 4th book. I gave up somewhere in the middle. There are too many other things to do besides read a never-ending story. I still love the start of WOT.
"We are seeing low fantasy, focusing on just humans, but dragons are a big deal" I think we can all agree that we can pinpoint Game of Throne's success for this
My creative writing teacher in college HATED fantasy and anything that couldn't have plausibly happened in real life. It made my grade suffer because I am exclusively a fantasy writer. I wouldn't have signed up for her class had I of known that I'd be docked points on my creative writing homework for "being unrealistic"...
I hate teachers like that. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with being forced out of your comfort zone and being made to adapt. Besides, nothing gonna stop you from writing fantasy in your spare time.
Flashback to my sixth grade creative writing assignment where I followed the prompt but got a 15/20 because the teacher said it "wasn't what she was expecting" . . . It's ridiculous. You can't ask for people to be original and then get upset that they do something "too creative"
@@1nONLY_DRock still bad if they only force one style of writing. If the teacher wanted the students to get out of their comfort zone they would give different tones and setting each time and not just "dont write fantasy"
My creative writing teacher was like that. He acted so childish, saying that all scifi, and fantasy were the same, and all terrible. Someone did a historical fiction and he straight up threw a fit over it until the student assured him it wasn't fantasy. Every story I did was scifi and fantasy just to spite him. Best part of my college experience was him admitting to me that he was wrong about the genres
"Lowered bar for prose" - I'm so glad you went there. I'm also not a snob when it comes to prose, but bad prose can be distracting. And it's so preventable. Get an editor or some beta readers. Watch some Sanderson creative writing lectures. There's no such thing as perfect writing, but that doesn't mean writers shouldn't take the time to improve their craft.
The thing is, Sanderson's prose isn't amazing either. That's not to say it's bad, it's competent and gets the job done, but it's lacking enough in voice that I struggle to stay engaged often. But yeah, I agree that competent and adequate prose shouldn't be that much of a reach.
DRLC exactly lol I’m rereading stormlight archive after coming from Tyrant Baru Cormorant and Sanderson’s prose in comparison is.... not great. He’s a plot and idea first author.
The lack of hope. We used to focus on heroes now they're just always taken from us. It's ok to believe in, and have people live up to, our expectations.
I recently read a story about a kind and humble man, who was reincarnated with power that matched his goodness, and quite a few of the negative reviews amounted to the character being too saintly. In a story about a saint. I feel every story has a place and cliche is a matter of time and saturation. For a time, pure heroes with small flaws were cliche, then the brooding anti-hero, now we have the villain protag and the broken ace, but I am starting to see the humble man, neither notably evil nor heroic, appear quite a bit, so maybe the next overdone trope will be the pure hero again.
@@flinfake I hope it is because I have been rewatching Superman The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and have watched some animated DC movies and I love a lot of those heroes because they make me wanna be like them. I *want* someone to look up to. There is nothing wrong with that! A lot of people want relatable characters more than anything, but they have been turning anything that isn't relatable down. It sucks. Especially now. I get that this could be a reflection of the times, but gosh, what some folks need is something that gives them hope.
I think saying that some prose has fallen to the level of fanfic writing is an insult to fan fiction. I read some fanfic in my middle school years with better prose than some actually published books
Sometimes i actually wish people wrote more like fanfiction because of this exact reason 😂 I've read so many that handle more complex, thought-provoking themes than most published books People who say its bad obviously haven't dug very deep
I think the problem here is that fan fiction is by far more saturated with bad writing on a magnitude that far eclipses traditional novels. Of course there is good fan fiction out there. 50 Shades of Grey proved that. The problem here is that fan fiction tends to be written by people who know the world that they are writing about but know next to none of the nuances of actual writing as well as a lack of understanding when it comes to the deeper systems in place for the world they are creating. They see one aspect of what they are trying to write about but they don’t dig to set the ground work. They tend to just throw their self insert and have a ball. I’m gonna repeat for the people that didn’t read above: there are good fan fiction writers out there. The issue here is that there are just too many people who use fan fiction as a sort of training for crafting their own stuff and their training pants flood the interwebs with all the other training pants and it all tends to smell really bad and the few good bodies of work just don’t provide enough febreeze to mask the scent, hence why people tend to see fan faction as mostly bad writing. ((Also, longer writing doesn’t equal better writing. There are books only 50 pages long that have better and far more substantial writing in it than a book the size of a Stormlight book.))
To this day the only piece of literature that made me cry is a fanfiction. Also I still don't know how one in particular that deals with REAL FBI stuff wasn't published, that shit was more true and reaal than 95% of series and movies out there about crime.
@@zedorian6547 I'm sorry but did you just say that 50 shades aka the most cliche and horribly written thing I've ever read (and I have over 500 fanfics on my kindle) proved something????
You know what i would like to see more: Mediterranean settings for fantasy. I am tired of "tavern tolkien d&d" like northern Europe fantasy stories, and would love to see more new mythological creatures trend, rather than dwarves, elves or dragons...
@@MouseySky sorry, though to be fair there's a very high degree of overlap between the name of the series and what I said (The Queen's thief). I should have mentioned the author's name though - Megan Whalen Turner FTW!
I have an idea for a story with a race based on Dryads, maybe some Naga-like snake people too. I agree though, tired of the singular story setting. All fantasy recently has either been of the Tolkien "northern Europe bar/sword/kingdoms" variety, or the Riordan/Rowling "modern setting but with magic!" variety.
Possibly a controversial opinion: Game of Thrones (the TV show, not A Song of Ice and Fire the series) is to blame for a lot of this. Over the last couple decades with Harry Potter, LoTR movies, etc. fantasy has become more and more mainstream. GoT firmly planted fantasy within mainstream media. Now, publishers are looking to cash in on the GoT hangover. Thus, they can take more risks with bad prose because the possible reward is much higher than before. Also, what did people love so much about GoT? The characters. The show has white walkers, dragons, and magic, but the characters battle over the iron throne drove the story. The fantasy elements did not. So now people are looking to copy GoT's character-driven story instead of Tolkien's style where the fantastical element drove the plot. What doesn't GoT have? Non-human races with developed cultures and mythologies. Sure, there's the children of the forest, but they don't have a developed culture or mythology and barely make an appearance. I think A Song of Ice and Fire is really excellent. Other than the poor prose trend, the others all appear in the GoT show. Tl;dr Everyone's trying to copy GoT
I think there are too many fantasy novels that feel the need to give us "THE WORLD." Countries, races, species, politics, wars, maybe even everyone teaming up to defeat Satan-kun. Politics and larger world-building can be good but I like to treat them as a bonus. I prefer when the stakes in the story are nonpolitical. More personal.
@@tiffprendergast Nothing is wrong with Harry Potter. I mention it because of it's immense mainstream popularity and it's role in bringing fantasy into the mainstream.
This is absolutely true. I'll add that it also fucked with the public's perception of history, which creates a feedback loop with fantasy's medieval setting. Too many people believe everyone in the Middle Aged were either shit caked peasants or sociopathic lords. The show cut out many more wholesome moments, and GRRMs descriptions of cities and castles as living places. People lived full lives before the Industrial Revolution.
I think the GoT, the show, was super mainstream itself. Everyone and their mother watched that show. So I don't think it necessarily created legions of fantasy book readers. Now, I think that is a subset of people who got into fantasy books after having watched the show and then read ASoIaF. If anything, that just led to more of an interest in "similar" grim-dark/epic/medieval themes. But again, I don't think the show was responsible for such an influx of fantasy readers that it changed the genre. If anything, fantasy was getting darker and grittier even before GoT. You could argue that ASoIaF had far more of an influence than the show. And even if the show had any such influence, it certainly shouldn't be blamed for the bad prose. Honestly, I don't think bad prose is anything new. I've read fantasy from every decade, starting with the 50s, and I can assure you that--as far as prose goes--you've got the good, the bad, and the ugly across the board. Perhaps there's an argument that the publishing game has changed drastically nowadays. There is just SO much more "stuff" out there since anyone can put their stuff on the internet and find a couple of readers. Back in the day, you were only exposed to what you read in magazines or heard from friends (i.e. the popular stuff). So that could be why it seems that prose is so much worse today. You're just exposed to more garbage than before. But there's always been garbage and there's always been gold.
I realize that this was only a small remark, but some fanfiction pieces are as beautifully and skillfully written as good original fiction. It's also a great training ground for writers, especially in the fantasy genre.
Thanks for saying so! It makes me sad when I see someone putting down fanfic as just bad writing all together . It’s a big category with lots of different kinds of writers so it’s hard to make a claim that applies to all of it
I was thinking the exact same thing! There are some fanfiction I've read that are so good I wish I could buy them as an actual book. Fanfic authors are terminally underappreciated and they do it all for free, legends.
For me the biggest problem is lack of proper editing. Especially when it is self-published. My cousin wrote a fantasy novel and she clearly did not have it edited by anyone. It really showed. Maybe just because I was an editor, but it annoys me when, as you said, the author uses the same words over and over again. Or when the first nine chapters are full of useless nonsense before the author gets to the actual story. For instance, my cousin's novel had the protagonist shower over twenty times in just one book. Not a joke. And it really had nothing to do with the story, it was just filler. I agree with all the points you made, but lack of editing is definitely my least favorite thing in modern writing.
Agree: if editors exist, there is a reason. A someone who write stories myself, I really feel the need for someone to review my work: even if that person is not a professional, he or she is usually still able to provide some useful feedback, from something formal like spelling mistakes and poor structure of a sentence to aspects such as pacing, plot contrivancies or inconsistences, characters acting in what appears to be out of character.
@@neoqwerty I actually made a fantasy race that's amphibian and they're design (as well as some of their abilities) are based on axolotls. When they're away from sources of water, and their not in a damp environment, their body usually tries to absorb water from the air or try it's best to contain the moisture it currently has which requires them to use less energy. That's why most of them usually carry a source of water when traveling. I'm still currently trying to finish writing them. I call them Axylids (my sister commented on how that sounded like a word for a kid of this species).
technically speaking, a showering scene could be relevant if the character comes to some important revelations or has a mental breakdown while doing it (or if it's there to establish a steamy romance and provide fanservice lmao)... but TWENTY TIMES!? how even...
I absolutely hate stories where the main character/characters never have their morality put into question or challenged in any meaningful way. It's even worse when the authors write a hypocrite that lacks any moral sturdiness but still play that character as if they are in the right. Even more so when said character moralizes to other characters that do the exact same thing, but the author paints them as the bad guy/girl/men/lady.
You should read six of crows, like all six of the main characters have moral struggles at one point all in the first book as well so I think you’d like it
The How to Train Your Dragon Books by Cressida Howell were incredible in terms of World Building and creating a new variety of dragon species. When you discovered a new species, it was like if Pokemon and Animal Planet had had a baby it was so satisfying. The format is also super creative, as it's told like a series of entries long after the main story actually took place
This video kind of encompasses one of my biggest anxieties as a writer. It feels like all fandoms these days are demanding more and more from people, and literature fans are no different. I don't read a whole lot, but I love literature, and I will just dive into a book every now and then. I write as a hobby, but I hope to someday publish some of my stories, and I just know that I am going to hear critiques claiming that I am copying authors I have never heard of or comparing me to the highest echelon of literature when I am just like, "Hey. I wrote a story. I put years of work into it. I hope you like it." There is almost this expectation that all authors think that their story is the best thing in the world, or that publishing your story is claiming something. And that's not always the case.
I feel that, im working on something rn for me and maybe would like to try to publish is and hope someone likes it without being told im copying or unoriginal. Im writing shit i like and tryna make it my own as well, changed my plot 3 times and the whole layout in 2 weeks
@@tcgxscout5863listen y'all I simply want to feel like the story is something deeply and profoundly compelling to you, the writer, cuz I can always tell as a reader if a scene was written from the heart or not. Originality is good but it doesn't replace authenticity. Then of course just ensure you're doing your best to incorporate writing best practices (a plot that works, mixing up sentence structure, showing not just telling, etc) and people like me will buy it. Especially if it's fantasy cuz I love the immersion.
Don't be afraid to be inspired by other works. Dirty little secret, go back and copy something from a hundred years ago and most people are going to be like "Wow! So creative, new and refreshing!" But don't like actually steal it wholesale though. I'm just pointing out that archetypes, mythologies, narrative styles etc can be lifted from old tales and brought into a new context or setting to do really cool stuff. Maybe it's time for a Golden Age sci-fi renaissance or we need a strong heroic protagonist to tackle problems head on vis-a-vis Beowulf or Conan. Genre mashups are great. If an author or a franchise speaks to you and has heavily influenced your passions and hobbies then carry on the torch. Build on the groundwork prepared for you. Whatever inspires you just take the time and effort to make it yours. Inject your voice, your vision. Like @Ricardo_Lopez said, authenticity comes from the heart. Write from the heart, edit with the brain.
I feel the exact same way right now. So hopefully hearing this reassures you that a lot of people understand how hard it is to write stories now a days
I think my main gripe against the modern fantasy is the over use of the "___ was the best thief" or "___ wanted to be the greatest assassin". Roguedark I would call it
Show don't tell. It's a fairly simple rule that folks seem unable to follow. There's never a "best" anyway. We called Bruce Lee the best martial artist ever, yet the Wing Chun master probably could've whooped him. It doesn't matter if the character's "the best," it matters what they do
The one thing I've always adored about Tolkien's books is the fact that the world feels like it's alive. Like he'll spend pages talking about Ents and Entwives, but he'll give us nothing about why Galadriel giving Gimli some of her hair was such a big deal. He treats that like as if it's common knowledge, but that the whole Ents isn't. That sort of thing makes his world feel alive when you compare it some modern day fantasy books. Like for example, the Hunger Games comes across as a very empty world unless the characters are directly interacting with it.
Is lords of the rings book series boring to read my friend? I have bought them together with hobbit and some people are saying it is amazing and some are saying it is unbelievably boring. Cheers
@@romanbatista3286 The beginning for both can be a bit boring. But it picks up after that. Personally my biggest struggle has always been getting through Gandalf's speech at Rivendell. It's something like five pages long in my copy.
I think there is an insight in Unfinished tales as to why Galadriel's hair is a big deal: the greatest (debatable) elf that ever lived asked her for a single thread of her hair, but she refused him because she sensed that he was motivated by pride and arrogance. Instead she gave gave three hair threads to Gimly eons later because she knew that his intentions were coming from genuine admiration and respect, not from greed and possessiveness. Lore-wise her hair is a shard of the blessed, far gone times of basically heaven on Middle-earth. Read the firts couple of chapters of Silmarillion for more information on the matter. Also, strategically it was a smart move that helped to somewhat remedy the thousands of years of discord between dwarfs and elves.
I picked up “Unnatural Magic” by CM Waggoner because it had a female troll as one of the two POVs. Like there’s hardly any fantasy stories nowadays where the central character is not human or mostly humanoid. Sure, fairies kinda count, but it’s been overdone and they are basically insanely hot models with pointy ears. We need more creatures as main characters!
"So I'm a spider, so what?!" is right up your alley then. Japanese light novels has been doing this for close to 10 years now. There's even an anime of the novel out at the moment.
@@DaultonYoung i tried to watch so I'm a spider, and other types like that. Could not stand them. The main cast is way too ditsy and stupid and moe-moe anime girl cutesy
I think the issue with the lack of modern high fantasy is that Tolkien wasnt trying to write a high fantasy when he created it. He drew from the heroic epic tradition and wrote it in the prose of a pre-modernist. If fantasy just aims at being fantasy it wont develop but just develop another replica of itself.
Agreed, I view similar to Matt Mercers effect on DnD. Huge amounts of people are trying to emulate his DM style and campaign style. While this trend isn't inherently bad everyone is limited by ability.
@@stormisuedonym4599 I find that fact really depressing because in Tolkien's world magic and what the Wizards did were not the same thing. The Wizards were angels in human form sent to prepare humanity for the struggle against Sauron and Dwarven/Elvish 'magic' were considered other influences we don't understand. High fantasy feels like a misunderstanding of his work
I would say use more other type of fantasy races. I’m tired to hell about Fae this and Fae that! How about Yokai? How about Nymphs? How about Celestial maidens of Ancient China? Gumiho of Korea? That stuff is interesting! Fae stuff can be interesting, but when it’s done to death and everyone is basically copying off each other with no major differences, yeah, no. Sorry.
And not folding every kind of nature-based spirit or entity under the banner of fae. Let the cultures that spawned these other creatures stand on their own instead of lumping them in with the fair folk.
Saeran Choi I agree. These days they are rather popular. Wicked Fox and it’s sequel Vicious Spirits (which was just released) are about the Korean variety. There is the Shadow of the Fox trilogy as well about Japanese Kitsune. Those are the ones most popular that I could think of off the top of my head but when it comes to the Big 5 traditional publishers these were the only examples I could think of. Self publishers (like myself) however, are writing a lot more about yokai and, of course, wuxia, then the Big 5 are and we fill a niche because of this.
Fantasy is one of the sons of Romanticism. Romanticism dedicated everything to the search of the infinity, of the sublime. Prose and sense of wonder are two core concepts that Modern Fantasy lost with extreme hard magic systems and dry, functional prose and too much realism.
Arianne ó DP Ari The main problem as far as I see it is that some people try to force reality into fiction, forcing modern issues into settings where it can’t properly fit or demand that imaginative and creative works include parts of reality for people who have little to no imagination.
Arianne ó DP Ari Worst thing is that you can add elements of real life into fiction and make it really interesting. Hell, reality is just as incredible and strange as fantasy and fiction in general, but people try and force reality into fiction as a way to spread some weird political views or modern issues instead of using those events as inspiration for interesting story elements.
I wonder how much Wicher series lost in translation. While everyone seems to mention the gritty, dark elements of the setting, there is a lot of powerfull scenes among the books thet evoke the classic fantasy sense of wonder Geralt and Jaskier catching a glimpse of underwater city inhabited by fish-people no one even knew existed. The mist on the frozen lakes of Nal Trachta. Knights Errand of Toussain rescuing Geralt's party at the mountain pass. The unicorn coming from the mists on a lake to aid Ciri in her moment of need. Just to name the few. It proves that with enough skill you can mix gritt and realistism with wonder and still end with solid consistent product.
I love the fact that dragons are becoming more and more prevalent in the modern fantasy genre, and as someone who loves stories about dragons very much, it's a little disheartening to see that it's almost one of those "trends" that is only becoming popular because it's a "cool" thing to have in the story. I've been reading several books which have dragons in them, and much like the points Daniel mentions, there's just not a lot of good writing and the stories end up bland, especially when the character is a dragon "just to be a dragon."
Yes this is such a ridiculous trend. It's funny, there are more fantasy stories than ever and yet they feel blander than ever at the same time. I think you've hit the nail on the head; "just because they're cool" isn't a good enough reason to include something in your narrative and world. It should have substance. It's been years since I read them, but I recall the dragons in Eragon having such personality. I figured there would be a lot of emulation of that but it often feels so forced or just off
I enjoy dragons, not a fanatic but they're pretty cool, but my biggest gripe is that people never seem to make dragons enough of a threat, they're always a "tough fight", when in reality they'd be hell turned to a hungry beast that's trying to kill you, they should be feared, the person fighting them should be mortally horrified, not just having a little bit of a rough time at things
I enjoy dragons, not a fanatic but they're pretty cool, but my biggest gripe is that people never seem to make dragons enough of a threat, they're always a "tough fight", when in reality they'd be hell turned to a hungry beast that's trying to kill you, they should be feared, the person fighting them should be mortally horrified, not just having a little bit of a rough time at things
I enjoy dragons, not a fanatic but they're pretty cool, but my biggest gripe is that people never seem to make dragons enough of a threat, they're always a "tough fight", when in reality they'd be hell turned to a hungry beast that's trying to kill you, they should be feared, the person fighting them should be mortally horrified, not just having a little bit of a rough time at things
That's intentional, remember - The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
I feel that a lot of the lack of new races as such is that people are building more complex human cultures and societies, and they tend to fill the space that custom races used to. Maybe im insane, but thats my take.
that may be a factor...but as an artist/writer that lives and breathes worldbuilding (with multiple non-human races) i can say that its probable the main reason people dont invent inhuman races is it -way- harder to do. it requires so many complex considerations for the differences in physical and mental attributes and how it influences the way they live, act, and interact with the other races and the world. then there is designing them visually, their anatomy-specific clothes, tools, preferences in architecture, not to mention social norms which might be heavily influenced by their biology (what if they have a 'queen bee' social structure? what if they live for hundreds of years? what if their pregnancies last for a decade?)...designing all of this and making sure it all integrates takes a VERY long time and stupid amounts of work. as a personal example, ive been actively developing my fictional world for 15 years - not very efficient when youre trying to write a book biannually, like most professional writers do.
@@aramhalamech4204 to be fair Game of Thrones is a TV series. In the actual books almost every human culture is given a lot more depth and character. Almost every place the POV characters go is made to feel like a living, breathing culture with a unique history, complex traditions and distinctive people. Except for the Dothraki. Those guys are just stereotypical Honorable Horse Lords in both the show and the novels.
I'd be happy with semi-standalone, personally. It's nice to see stories set in the same universe, but with little else connecting them save maybe some characters.
I was originally planning a high fantasy novel using the traditional races; humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. with the protagonist being an elf. But eventually I just thought it was played out and just bad, so I started creating a new setting where these traditional races don't exist, as well as there being no humans, in a way. Humans would be largely extinct, having been replaced by this magically/alchemically created race, originally humans of conquered lands who were forcibly converted into these specialized forms to serve as more efficient slave labor. What's more, actual humans, while existing, due to an enormous slave revolt were largely wiped out, so the one remaining "true human" nation needs to create artificial humans, essentially homunculi, to try and keep the race going. Problem being these artificial humans are unstable, sickly and becoming increasingly weaker with every generation.
Let me second the lone response I can see here. This does sound interesting, and fertile ground for a rich story. You've got a great backstory that creates a compelling world that can be slowly revealed. Awesome way to hook a reader for a setting like this. Sort of like the usual fallen ancient empire, but a fallen ancient *species*. Great morality play as well. And an interesting setting to explore character. Almost a very scifi way to do it where you explore human sociology through the lens of aliens. Plotting could be almost anything. The most difficult part (depending on your skill level at various aspects of writing) would be creating interesting, compelling characters. They way I can tell you have an interesting concept is if it instantly sparks an avalanche of ideas, and your outline here did that. I hope you've done something with this.
One of the things I've definitely noticed is the fantasy genre has moved away from Tolkein, and seemingly towards GRRM as it seems many newer stories are trying to be this dark and gritty A Song of Fire and Ice like fantasy
Thing is: Ice and fire/GoT isn't all that dark. The battles, fights and the Violence are very comparable to Tolkiens work. The only difference is that GRRMs characters are all "morally grey" (=borderline sociopathic).
That is not just fantasy. For the last 15 to 20 years all western entertainment has been moving to dark and gritty. It is part of why I stopped watching most modern TV shows and movies.
Lotr and The Hobbit maybe a little bit cute, but The Silmarillion and its three children are really dark. Not as dark and gross as Martin's but dark in a sophisticated way. I still can't get over the death of Beleg. It hit harder than the red wedding
and ppl misinterpreted asoiaf completely 💀 eg. Netflix trying to adapt Avatar by aging up the characters, adding gore and s*x scenes as if the og story isn't depressing enough. grrm is defined his characters paying the price for whenever they go wrong often de*th.. Six of crows is a pretty good YA fantasy with good characters that's why people are moving to anime,writers here just think morally grey means horrible people who kill for fun
Yeah I read a lot of YA fantasy and the theme always seems to be a female lead that is secretly royalty/'chosen one' and there is a steamy romance on the side. Nothing else is really compelling or built up in the story
Yeah it's annoying because the author just doesn't want to write an actually normal developed relationship and instead has them connected through destiny
It's a shame. I've noticed that a lot of western authors embrace trends far too tightly because they focus on the outcomes of writing more than the writing itself. They want success, and they can get it by playing it safe. It's particularly egregious in YA literature, because as we all know, young adulthood is the period of life when people hate change and trying new things...
@@renard6012 Is that so. When I was at that age, I had always tried my hands on different ideas every time I write. If I drop the novel at that time, then I would abandon the idea and never make something too similar ever again. I guess that's because I've read alot of books already? Or maybe I just had some sort of hate for things like replication?
As an writer and aspiring author, I'm extremely sick and tired of *abuse-ship* and idolizing unhealthy habits in relationships. Books like 50 Shades, and books in that vein.
@aleahcim hit the childhood trauma part to a T. Like god. There are so many “love stories” where the dude is abusive or gross. I was reading one and it was heavily implied that the main dude was an actual r*pist. I expected people to shun him and was happy he didn’t get a good ending, but most people were saying stuff like “awww he had a bad childhood his dad was a bad guy :((((((“ it was frustrating
Honestly for me, the reason I write is to put my true emotions on paper and to have characters who understand what I'm going through mentally. Writing is such a beautiful thing because it requires you to be vulnerable with yourself.
For the longest time, fantasy was a dirty word, and fantasy books were seen as childish and only for readers who weren't serious and the genre was seen as sub-par. It's like comics. Today almost every single film or TV adaptation insists on calling them graphic novels, as if somehow that's classier and makes them a different entity from a comic book. Because comics are just the funny pages for slow readers. We still see a bit of that embarrassment factor today in fantasy novels. The bookstores and supermarkets did 'adult' covers for Harry Potter and GoT novels, so people who didn't normally read fantasy wouldn't feel embarrassed to be seen reading them in public. I think some of this rubbed off on the writers, so they felt as if had to sneak the fantastic element of fantasy in through a side door. Fuck that. My books have mages with loud, flashy magic, non-human races of my own creation and plenty of weirdness. From page 1 you know what you're getting. I'm not embarrassed about reading or writing fantasy and never have been.
Stephen Aryan Never understood the embarrassment either. A good story is a good story, humanity’s enjoyed a fun tale since the first languages were made. Doesn’t matter what the genre is or how old it is.
@@joshuapowell6822 very true. It's not something I read but I know a lot of people also look down on the romance genre and think it's trash. But if you like it, then you like it.
When it comes to fantasy races I've seen a trend, perhaps especially in D&D where all the different races are just human but short and grumpy or human but tall and graceful etc. There's no real drive to have these people be different from humans, sort of making them like a Fortnite skin...
I highly recommend the Keeper Of The Lost Cities series by Shannon Messenger. It has all of the different races, like elves, dwarves, trolls, all that stuff, and they look completely different from each other and have different societies and biologies instead of just reskins of the same thing, and it’s all actually story relevant instead of just being there for the sake of it.
@@itisi2042 KotLC is one of my favorite series and I will NEVER stop recommending it. I love the dynamics and cultures of all the different intelligent species and it’s just an overall amazing series. Although, it is made for a younger audience, I find anyone can enjoy it.
Even more so in D&D recently. The developers have made a concerted effort to file down the differences between species, rewriting raw to scrub distinguishing flavour, lore and mechanics from non-humans, essentially making them all reskins of humans. The release of Monsters of the Multiverse exists solely to undo one of the integral elements of fantasy; the fantasy.
I’d like to see, when morally grey characters are there, for that to be actually purposeful instead of just a tool to allow those characters to have no drive. Being neutral in itself is a moral stance, it’s important to show the impact of that not only on their choices, but in comparison to those around them. Not even that they “need to change” and “be good” but show a dichotomy of morality that is actually interesting. Neutrality doesn’t mean no personality or drive. Also what’s wrong with having a generally good protagonist?? Why is that dying out!?
Do you mean a MORALLY good character? Or do you mean a quality good (well-developed)? You asked, "Also what’s wrong with having a generally good protagonist?? Why is that dying out!?" If you mean morally good... Being morally good is difficult. It's also often (apparently) considered cliche. Critics seem to think that REAL people CAN'T be morally good... therefore, they have to be "gray" in order to be realistic... and if they aren't "realistic", then they can't be "well-written". Also, of course, they MUST be "flawed"... which has become a cliche itself. Besides, REAL heroes are just so... passe. (Yeah, that's sarcasm there.) Look at Rian Johnson's "critically acclaimed masterpiece", The Last Jedi, and what he did to Luke... Even our fictional heroes aren't safe from character assassination. (BTW, I almost puked putting TLJ and "critically acclaimed masterpiece" in the same sentence.)
Yeah the antihero was tedious in the 60s and 70s, and we're revisiting it real hard. Good and functional arent seen as linked. forced moral or mental failings are seen as normative.
@@aramhalamech4204 Gandhi slept with/next to his teenage niece to prove his resistance and purity, Jesus is literally Christian mythology, Lincoln advocated for the separation of white and Poc people and said that mixed race marriage was wrong. Noone is flawless. They all did good things, no shade, but they also were flawed.
@@cockycookie1 Yeah of course everyone is flawed but that doesn't mean that we have to be defined by our flaws or can't overcome them. a flawed character can still be a good person but for some reason most characters in fantasy literature are more defined by their failings and flaws making them all grimdark anti-heroes. It's becoming a trope at this point and it annoys me greatly.
After dipping into so many different fantasy series this year I’ve been saddened by the amount of medieval-ish humans being the basis to build out, or not, from. It’s made me respect Star Wars a whole lot more. Sure Star Wars wasn’t literature, but from a world building perspective it was so happy to throw in masses of interesting species of creature and different ways of life to explore. I’m really struggling to find a good fantasy series that has the real high part of high fantasy, and not just earth in a different time period with some magic.
@@randomdistructionShould put a CW, because it's absolutely unhinged and kinda fucked up. It adds to the story tho of course, and all the characters adhering to a very "non-heroic" moral code is part of what makes it great, I love that the protag is a bit of a scumbag. But still, it's pretty grapey and stuff.
So two things. 1) I reeeeally wish you posted some text examples when referring to poor prose versus what you consider to be more "poetic", because while I think I know what you mean, I could just be flat wrong. You don't even have to source the text if you're worried about putting an author on the spot, just some blurb so I have a better idea of what you mean. 2) When you mention the idea of fantastical elements driving the plot, are you saying you want more stories where fantasy is the end rather than it being a means to an end?
This is basically what I came to say. More examples to back up the claims would be nice. Despite my agreeance on most points, I'd like to see contextual evidence.
I think what he's talking about are stories where the fantasy setting could be swapped out for another one without impacting the story. Often the best sci-fi/fantasy makes the setting integral to the plot, or has some interplay with the characters.
I think the complaint boils down to "fantasy" drawing closer to "fiction". I think the First Law example is a good example for the fantastical elements complaint. Especially in the second trilogy so far, there is very little magic outside of Rikke's Long Eye. How much would change about the second First Law trilogy if it was set in England and Ireland instead of Midderland and Angland? In the first trilogy, the search for the Seed is a good example of a fantastical element driving the plot. The search for the Seed provides the need for the main characters to go off on their own away from their familiar civilizations and have the desired interactions and growth. Fantasy is not the end; it's the means to the end. I believe his complaint is that it's not even the means to an end in many modern "fantasy" stories.
5:40 hot take: I prefer most "human only" settings to settings that just rehash the classical fantasy race tropes. If you do different races, please do make them very different, not just "human+ with pointy ears" and "green and evil body builders". Also: a lot of settings with races have "good" and "evil" races, which I dislike in general. More moral ambiguity and a stronger focus on culture over race would be preferable imo.
Actually, one of the few things I really loved about the Eragon books by Christopher Paolini was that the orcs (I know, he doesn’t call them that, but that’s what they are!) start out being super one dimensional and evil, but then later that is revealed to only be Eragon‘s perspective and they become reluctant, but somewhat respected allies and are explored a bit further.
I'm working on a story with about three separate races, humans, space elves and dark space elves (my coauthor came up with them not me). A major point in the stories were writing is the conflict between humans and the space elves that eventually erupts into a kind of race war. I don't want to dive into tired old tropes like "These elves have enslaved our people for so long! Rise up my brother's and sisters!" Rather, I want their conflict to emerge out of more subtle issues. Like how the cultures and attitudes of the humans disgust these elves and the humans find the elves to be pretentious snobs. I have also attempted to heavily diversify various human groups as well as the space elves (though they are distinctly more homogeneous). I also personally don't mind having distinctly good or evil races either though I can see why others might not care for such black and white lines. In the case of such settings though I think it would be important/interesting to see how the races interact both in personal instances as well as on a larger scale. Have grand battles where attributes of both races have distinct influence on how they wage war or how they deal in political affairs and all that stuff.
I feel like the "good" and "evil" races thing in fantasy fiction is a holdover from things like Tolkien and CS Lewis' work, which had *very* strong "these beings are always evil" lines, but that this is also a holdover from mythology. There's a lot of mythical creatures that are just *always* malicious by nature, particularly among the fae, yokai, and other such beings. Things like the Valravn, the Redcap, the Oni, are portrayed as universally malevolent, suggesting that this trope has just been a thing for perhaps as long as people were telling fantastical stories. Also, of course, one can definitely lay some blame on Dungeons & Dragons. There's a whole lot of races (Drow, Orcs, etc.) who are always listed as being of Evil alignment, no exceptions...unless you're bleeping Drizzt Do'Urden.
@@Mokiefraggle There is some pretty good rational for that sort of thing though. There are plenty of "evil" things in the world. Or at the very least things that are always looking to hurt you if you get too close. Things like predatory animals can be labelled as evil. Sure you can excuse it by saying they don't know any better, but that doesn't change the fact that they instinctively attack and harm to a person is conflated with evil being done to them. And there are genuinely evil people in the world. These default evil races can be an allegory for such people but the important thing to realize is that these races don't really refer to specific ethnic or cultural groups in real society but anyone who could be considered genuinely evil. We have plenty of examples of this in history. People like the Nazis and in more immediate life there are the bitchy Karens who seemingly just hate everyone. They might not be your traditional "evil" individual but they surely can't be considered good and it is this generally bitter and resentful attitude that is simply taken to it's logical extreme in evil fantasy races. They are people with unbridled hatred and bitterness within them willing and happy to hurt anyone around them simply for the sake of it.
I agree, there is no real point in having fantasy races if each of them is just humans with certain amplified characteristics or narrow cultural tropes, just stick to humans then, they allready have all that diversity. On the other hand, I'm intrigued by fantasy races that are in a meaningful way distinct from anything a human could be, but also follow an understandable inner logic. For classical elves that could mean leaning heavily into their endless lifespans and what it means for cultures and societies when all previous generations are present at all times and even how biology and evolution might work for a race that as a whole needs to adapt to changes but of which recent generations only make up a small demographic.
Update: I am getting more into translation now and are looking for native English speaking beta readers. As a swedish published fantasy author I'm slowly but surely translating my book into english. I've obly got a few pages out of a 508 pages long novel so far, but it is fun. My book is a bit unique compared to English/American fantasy simply because of how Scandinavian it is. I also got a lot of inspiration from the Crusades and Asian mythology.
Best of luck. Are you doing the translation yourself or getting it proffesionally done? I know translation can be a real art because some ideas don't translate well or a million other things. Best of luck. Make sure to get proof readers.
@@zidaryn Thank you. I've only translated 4 pages, and those are pretty good, but it is as you say. I've recently befriended a translator actually, so I will see if I translate it myself or not. It really is a struggle as you say and even though Swedish and English are quite similar, I still have to replace some words, reword some sentences and essentially rewrite the book, although not really since it is the same story, characters, themes and scenes. If it is to be translated it will have to be a long term project, and there needs to be demand for the English translation, so maybe focusing on building up a brand, for example by building up a RUclips channel first, would be a better idea. Professional translations are really expensive though, and having recently been a student money isn't something I have in piles. ;)
@@marcusappelberg369 I don't know how fluent you are in English, but I would highly recommend getting it professionally translated. I study French with focus on translation so I had a lot of classes on it. It takes knowledge of not only the language but also culture to translate anything. Fantasy is even harder due to noelogisms and hidden cultural perspective, there's also the question of how faithful to the original you wanna be. Even if you manage to translate it all to English will it sound natural? Will you convey the imagery (I'm not sure proper English word for this term of literary criticism) for English speakers to understand? Have you used stylisation? If yes, do you know how this type stylisation works in English? How about archaisms? There's so much to every little detail even choosing British, American, Canadian or Australian version changes ways of conveying things. Still hope you will succeed internationally.
If you are a new writer I have two channels that you should watch: Hello Future Me. He does lots of advice in writing, like "designing a magic system" and etc. The vids are awesome. Overly Sarcastic Productions. Check out the Trope Talks playlist first. Red goes over different tropes from fiction from Mary Sue's, to The Five Man Band, and more. Once your done with the Trope Talk, hang around the channel for Mythology Sumerized or Blue's quick history vids. Great stuff. Lots for you there.
I agree with the stance that fantastical motivations have seen a decline. I call it "The Death of the MacGuffin", and it really in large part due to this (mistaken) perception that a character's motivations, when tied to some nebulous or fantastical object are somehow lessened. "It's not realistic!" they cry. I counter by pointing out that Ponce de Leon (sp?) was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he stumbled across North America. Hundreds or even thousands of legit archeologists have spent their entire lives hunting the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tossing a 'Guffin in front of your characters and letting them chase it, it's actually a very relatable and human thing to do.
I really agree with this! I really like these over the top fantastical motivations as a writer myself, but the modern aversion to them makes it tricky. I (lovingly) copied off George Lucas by making the McGuffin a character that lacks the ability to move the plot along themselves. The reader is meant to actually care about this lovable character, and by extension, the McGuffin buried inside. It's almost not a McGuffin, as you trick the reader into caring about it!
Couldn't agree more. In a lot of situations the MacGuffin is tied to some world altering thingo and people claim that as lazy because you don't bother to explain how the thing does what. But I think that you can get away with this lack of clarity by wrapping whatever it is in adequate mystique. Have it be magical in nature and magic be something that is mysterious to most of the cast. This isn't something so easily done in Sci-Fi and in Fantasy with hard magic systems. Everything has to be explained in those sorts of stories (unless you've made some equivalent to magic in you science fiction story). A personal gripe of mine with modern audience cynicism is the idea that pure evil villains are bad. They say they aren't realistic or compelling. It's like, "Do you really not think there are people out there who kick puppies for fun?" If you answered that question with a "No" then I know some videos that will change your answer. So I fundamentally disagree with the idea they are 'cartoonishly evil'. The harder part is making them compelling/interesting. Depending on what kind of villain you write it might be impossible to make them interesting as a person. Evil Overlords are rather one dimensional as a general rule. But to make them more dynamic can detract from their menace. They are supposed to be ominous, imposing, cold and all encompassing. Making them sympathetic will ruin that overwhelming aura of power and fear they should instill in the reader. Psychopaths are a lot easier to make interesting as a character and if you have an ounce of imagination I doubt I need to explain why. As for compelling though, I would argue that the one-dimensional overlords are as compelling as any other kind of villain. Typically they represent the greatest challenge for the hero to overcome. By definition they are compelling. It does help to add underlings to th is kind of villain to spice up his dynamic a bit and add variety to their scenes.
@Railstar1976 The problem is when the MacGuffin becomes a vehicle to tell terrible stories about something is when it becomes very boring. Most of the writing is also of the lowest level. Most fantasy writing is of the standard of James Patterson writing. It does not matter what genre you are in bad writing is hard to stomach.
@@bighands69 No individual trope is "bad writing" across the board, or not. That's just not how it works it all. It's a matter of how it's written, many of the best stories use McGuffins.
What I feel like, especially in the past couple of years, is that there has been such a major push for writing characters that must be grey to a fault. People worry more about the prospect of everyone being able to relate to the morally grey villains and heroes and anti-heroes, but in reality most people rarely relate to the same extremities within personality traits and motives. Instead, what is realistic, is that some people will be able to relate, and others will find it difficult. Very rarely do we see actions that are equally relatable to everyone - so when writers keep pushing for more and more "relatable" characters, what they end up doing is shaving off any edge and complexity that character may have had, in favor of creating these mellow clumps of personas that are attached to the characters in their stories. The broader reader segment a character is relatable to, the less individualistic they will come across, and oftentimes less noteworthy as a result. Grey aspects in characters is great, because that's what breaks the stereotypes and makes us think deeper about motives and the potential for growth in unexpected directions - but an overabundance of grey personality loses the sense of the core character itself and you start moving away from a human personality, and shallowness takes over instead. Many writers today aren't as aware of this potential pitfall as they should be.
I don't like this trend away from really "good" heroes, either; one of my favorite philosophical writers thought a similar trend among churchgoers was a "mutual non-admiration society." People have become so allergic to aspiring to becoming anything other than lumps of human flesh with deep-seated needs and insoluble problems. Heroic characters, in fiction and real life alike, show us that we CAN do better than that.
Excellent points in this comment thread. I would add, taking this as a jumping off point: this anti-hero "all characters including main characters must be grey" trend has also infected popular cinema as well, at least for the last decade. This includes retconning characters from the past who may have been more morally grounded and heroic, and making them more "grey." A trend running alongside this is making villains more sympathetic to an extreme or to a fault. Perhaps the epitome of this is the (now overdone) trope of the redemption arc, with the villain turning good. What I find troublesome about both trends is that it has the problematic result in which truly heinous or evil crimes or actions -- such as murder, or murder on a large scale -- being relatively easily forgiven and forgotten. "Heroes" who are ostensibly admirable commit bad deeds, but are forgiven like it's no big deal. Villsins are redeemed and even join the "good guys" or become admirable characters through perhaps one simple act, as if all their history of morally horrific previous actions didn't exist, not troubling them or those about them, and we as the audience are also to forgive and forget so very easily. Even worse is when there is no real making of amends, or of restorative justice. tdrl: there is too much tolerance for doing the wrong thing, and forgiveness is unearned. There are plenty of exceptions to this; but that can often prove the rule, and besides I'm noting large trends. I wish what I said was not the case, so if I'm off-base with these ideas, please prove me wrong!
I blame social media. Specifically, the terminally online types who reflexively reject anything that might look like judgment, morality, or basic human decency, loudly voicing their opinions and being the only ones in the room, thus making it seem like they're not a tiny fraction of the general population.
I love grey characters, but I hate how EVERYTHING has to be grey or Grimdark now. Where did the heroes go, now the narrative is either nobody is good or only the MC who is 'good' aka super preachy stand on a soapbox sanctimoniously shoving their opinions down the readers throat as a way for the author to virtue signal, Its annoying. I miss heroes who were heroes for the sake of being heroic. What happened to villains and monters, I miss monsters being monstrous not sympathetic. I miss villains do villainous things because they are just bad people. I don't want characters to be 2 dimensional, but what we are getting is 2 dimensional just in the other direction. I swear if I read one more fic where "The MC's life is suffering" I'm gonna lose it. Grimdark and misery porn has become more common than anime girls wearing sailor schoolgirl uniforms. I feel bad for these authors and the redditors that simp for them, because they are terminally online, believe toxic nonsense, and it shows.
"Where everything in the story is being motivated by fantasy." This is one of my favourite aspects about the fantasy genre. You've got magic! Use it! With the fantasy series I'm writing the fantasy elements of the world ARE the main plots because, to me, thats why you write fantasy.
@Wyncrer I don't know, sometimes I like a novel purely for the escapism of travelling to another world. Sometimes though I kind of feel that authors can tunnel in on worldbuilding and magic systems in particular to the detriment of the story as a whole. Not always of course, all books are different and there's plenty of room for different types of story. But I think you can be trying to do too much, too many things. There can be too much of a goodthing sometimes, what do you think?
Martin and Abercrombie are the two main exceptions to this "rule". Somehow, you still get such a fantasy feeling, yet the magic is just. .kind of there, natural to the world, so much it kind of goes unnoticed. I love that too, when well done. It's pretty realistic, somehow.
@@XakoWako , if you build your entire book on magic systems, or detailed world building, very often indeed the plot suffers. Most people in these other world's do not possess magic. The world is often not driven by it, but by mundane concerns. If you don't address those, you inavitably miss something.
Your point about less fantasy focus within fantasy reminded me of one of my complaints about the Star Wars sequels; because they never use the force while fighting each other, force user fights became just sword fights instead of Space Magi duels.
Enuma Elish Wait? Can I ask for clarification? The point of my comment was to say that the sequels weren’t the only ones that had people sword fighting instead of using the force. Let’s not forget the weak fight of, “only a master of evil darth.” Or if we were talking about the ‘political’ aspects of the sequels(the fault of Disney wanting to pay lip service to social causes just for a money, but never actually doing anything substantial.). The prequels were literally about how the republic(liberal democracy) fell because of an opportunistic individual drumming up a support base from those who were tired of war. (One that he orchestrated.) The separatists were expounded in the clone wars as having qualms with how those with economic interests subverted democracy. In the end, both were played and the republic never meaningfully challenge the growing power of Palpatine. See, “So this is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause.” I won’t defend the vapid nature of the sequels(made so definitely by ROTS). My comment was remarking on how all the Star Wars movies fail to demonstrate the “Space Magi” that OP lamented that he disliked their exclusion from the sequels. The OT and the PT did the same in many ways. That was my point. Not the ‘politics’ of the sequels.
@Pennuang Domduangden Boiled leather describes something common in the setting. It's like complaining if they say "sword" too much. Pale could just be changed to other adjetives.
Its always strange to me that people have to defend quality, because it looks like its a race to the bottom in terms of writing at the moment. Even in the pulp era, where pulp writers could knock out a novel in a couple of days, not all writers were created equal. Talent counts. And btw, well written does NOT mean flowery writing. Just sayin´.
Exactly. The current quality of lots of fantasy is appalling right now. Quality does not equal flowery. In fact flowery can be bad if done badly too. The idea that he feels the need to defend this opinion just goes to show how bad the writing quality has got. If someone takes that personally then maybe they shouldn't be writing - or need a lot more practice and need to improve the quality of what they read.
yeah, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. EVERYTHING technically lives in Gutenberg's shadow but that's not stopping us from remixing and enjoying new creations!
Eh, the mystery genre has yet to shed the shadow of Arthur Conan Doyle but no ones ever complained about it. I think we are way too critical of fantasy sometimes when other speculative fiction has the same, if not worse, tropes that fantasy also has.
My brother is writing a fantasy book set in 1960's America with magical artifacts based off of American foklore. The story is going to be focused on taking down the baddies who are using the magical artifacts and a magical substance to achieve their goals. He also has a few new fantasy races and creatures (some designed by me), and I think a couple are quite unique.
@@stefanlangenberg2439 He's working hard to make it perfect (I'm editing it) so he's only on chapter 9 right now. I'll try to remember to come back here if it gets published
that last point, chef's kiss. in a genre like fantasy, where you can make every plot-related element more interesting that the real world, it's such a missed oportunity
This is making me feel good about making characters whose fantastical abilities basically drive the entire plot. I was feeling self conscious like, is that too one-dimensional? They have full fledged character arcs involving drastic emotional change, but it kind of made me feel like they were somehow less believable because the magic is kind of all-consuming at times. I mean, wouldn't anyone become a little consumed if they wielded extremely dangerous magic?
Clara Bryant Power does corrupt people. Maybe consider fitting that in if it won’t derail the story, or maybe how the characters feel about what they do with this magic. Would they be terrified about how they could kill with magic or destroy buildings with it? I’d certainly be terrified if I could just conjure fire in my hand or freeze something solid.
@@joshuapowell6822 Haha I'm way ahead of you. It's about a girl who can travel through dreams and she uses the power wrongly, causing someone to get hurt, feels remorseful, and then changes her boundaries with the magic.
@@aboycalledfish Woah that's so cool. I don't think that's one dimensional fantasy wise, I mean, it's fantasy, so if it's in tandem with the characters then it's sure to be a driving point to the plot
There is so much great Fantasy and Science Fiction from the last 60 years...You don't need to worry about modern trends. I was a fantasy super fan until I went to college and grad school. I am reading fantasy again and I just picked up where I left off. I just finished the first two books of the "New Sun Trilogy" by Gene Wolfe and I am starting Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné series.
Or more precisely, Dragon Rider school stories, especially ones where some vagabond imprints on a super-powerful dragon that was supposed to go to some noble.
So have I! Fanfic can be extremely well written. Also, it often allows for types of stories that you almost never see in published novels. If you want 50k words of just fluff and humor with little to no plot, you got it! If you want a story so dark that it would never find traction outside of fanfic, it's just a few clicks away! Hell, if you want characters from two entirely separate universes interacting, that's on aisle three. Yeah, there's a lot of self-indulgent stories and smut, but what's wrong with that? Especially since (and no offense to published novels) the smut in fanfic is on average much higher quality, especially on AO3. And much stranger, if you're into that sort of thing. The point is that fanfic has basically become an entirely new medium for stories. I can't really think of anywhere else that allows for the level of creativity, interactivity, and freedom that's found there. Of course, this is all just my opinion, but as someone who has read millions of words of both traditional works and fanfiction, and written a significantly smaller amount of both, I think I have a fairly good basis on which to make this claim.
Hmm like average writing style would be: “He watched her walk away, slamming the door as she left.” More sophistication: “Her steps were purposeful and rigid. The stomps of her feet thumping their way through his brain. His eyes were glued to her back, willing her to turn around. She did not. His gaze remained locked on the closed wooden door. He knew it would never open to her again.” And in this second example you can see the prose, it tells a mini story through description where as the first is more simple, straight to the point, less emotional.
Basically he is saying that the writing should be more poetic, but in a purposeful and competant way. Prose is, to seriously simplify a complex idea, the poetic quality of writing that tends to separate it from speech. Prose can also be really cringe if is done poorly or overdone, so it is a bit of a balancing act.
As a Lit Major myself, I totally get what you mean in this. I can make allowances, but there’s a certain expectation of ‘professional’ writing as opposed to casual personal ‘fanfic’ writing. That being said, there are some Fanfic writers who are clearly building their craft for the professional world, and they’re gems!
I'm an amateur writer and I just wanted to say I agree with all of your points. I read a lot more than I write and I've also noticed how the prose of fantasy writers can be irregular. The most recent example was a vampire fantasy story I read and the author kept referring to female characters by their hair color instead of their names; 'The blonde did this.' 'The brunette did that." and so on. The story itself was great, I finished reading the book in three days, but seeing that 'writing quirk' made me wince. I started writing my own fantasy story a few months ago and I love the process of world building and creating the history and culture for the races I've included in it. Of course, I'm drawing a hefty bit of inspiration from Tolkien, Martin and Herbert, but I'm hoping my novels won't be considered too cliche or derivative.
I cannot stomach most of the modern fantasy stories. Martin is a good writer but nothing special as a writer but he is not a fantasy writer. Martin shows how poor the genre is by being a good writer with an amazing imagination can produce great fantasy.
You've hit right on something I find an incredibly awkward tool of the amateur writer. The tendency to want to avoid using a person's name too often, often cited as feeling awkward, and thus to refer to them by some feature instead. The "hair color" thing, the race thing (calling a character "the elf," or whatever), or "class" (Rogue, Barbarian, Paladin...like it's D&D), when that's even less realistic than just going with "Bob said this". You don't refer to your friends by their hair color, even in your own head!
@@Mokiefraggle Speaking of awkward tool of amateur writers, I remember a serie(where I barely got throught book 1) where the author, besides many other shit, loved adjective way too much. One passage that I still think about is one time where she decided to randomly describe the main character's eye in details in the middle of the story. It's in french, but it could be translated by something like this: her eyes were big, bright, blue...and this is where she used a word I didn't know. After some research, it turns out that this word meant a blue-green color. Which is obviously a bit repetitive considering that you've already said that the eyes are blue. Was really strange.
Rotherweird, while not set in the victorian era, is set around a village subtly idealistically trapped in victorian standards and has a good Man Vs. Nature aspect, and gothic in its presentation of the town itself with spires and weird characters and all that goodness. Not 100% what you’re looking for, but I hope that helps a little bit!
I've already recommended this to you, but the John Cleaver series by Dan Wells (Brandon Sanderson's college best friend) is a real world dark fantasy series that makes up its own fantasy race called The Withered. It starts out as horror in book 1 and 2 and turns into dark fantasy in book 3 onwards, and you don't really learn about who The Withered are or how they work until the second trilogy in the 6 book series, but I gotta tell you, this series blew my mind. I will say it is YA. However, it has the perfect blend of poetic prose and regular prose, a fascinating protagonist that rivals the complexity of your most complex adult fantasy characters, no love triangles (there's one sort of implied, but it doesn't happen onscreen), and a truly epic journey that starts incredibly small and self-contained in book 1. I highly highly recommend it to you. Book 1 has some debut novel problems, but other than that the series is perfect, and it's my favorite fantasy series of all time, even more than Stormlight. Each book is only about 300 pages long.
The series also manages to have two excellent villains, Bill Crowley and Nobody, which is pretty rare. Even if a series is lucky enough to have a good villain, it's typically the one villain, and hardly ever the main villain
I am a non-native English writer. Even though I am somewhat fluent in English (atleast I think so), I can't really make the words flow and accurately define emotions of the character. I lack the native connect to the readers. Nevertheless, I am confident that I can flesh out the characters well and drive the plot in the right way, I suck at making conversations within characters (small talks, pun....). And Deep down I have always felt some sort of an inferiority complex. Neep help..
I have conversations with mine out loud as any of the characters involved. Even talking about something mundane that's not related to the story. I picked it up from doing script writing. Which has really helped me improve on my characters conversations. I hope that helps.
Vyacheslav Avsjanik true, a bad thing i noticed though is that especially Americans make a lot of grammar mistakes themselves, like they're/their... I guess I should search on a platform for this specifically
Honestly, as a teen in high school, YA was my favorite, and it was the best thing in the world, basically. but now, In my early 20s, I cannot stand it. There are very few that I can pick up and read through, is is just horrible.
I don't think it's fair to consider just age groups as the driving factor behind demographic trends. I'm in the YA target age group, but none of my male friends read that genre purely because 90% of it is targeted at women (who are also the largest consumers of fiction and romance specifically).
I will never understand using "fanfic" as an insult. Sure, there are a lot of very amateur, fan-made stories out there you can't help but cringe while reading, but many fanfic authors are often better writers than "published" authors.
nah fr i read some of the fnaf books, specifically faz frights and tales from the pizzaplex and jfc everyday i just beg for someone from ao3 to write just one of the stories bc damn why did i pay 15 dollars to have the line "youre not like other girls... youre weird... different..." in there 😭😭😭
Most fanfics you find out there are still pretty poorly composed, though. “Professional” writing has deteriorated to the point where it is much easier for fans to outshine “published” authors, but even with the lower bar, you still need to dig through a lot of chaff to find the gold.
@@JustAnArrogantAlien I think I just have a skewed opinion as the fanfics I have read are ones that stick and I drop the ones that are poor. Bc the GOOD fanfics can do some AMAZING things. I have cried so much via fanfics' stories it's crazy
Something I have noticed is that children's fantasy has been way more creative and interesting in terms of the fantasy genre (from what I have read anyways). From what I could tell there is more of a focus on non-human characters like dragons, animals, and other fantasy races. Some series that come to mind from my teenage years being Guardians of Ga'Hoole and Wings of Fire. While some may lack the detailed prose of adult novels, I often find myself more interested in stories they tell. Not going to lie, most YA novels are very long-winded, boring or just too similar to another for me. So even though I am 22 now, i still find myself heading back to the pre-teen section of bookstores to see what is on the shelves. On a side note, I feel like people do not realize how awesome non-human POVs are in fiction. They can offer up so many new perspectives and interactions! I have noticed a trend of "non-human" characters that are just humans with height differences or altered body features. I don't like it. (Also, a minor nitpick for me: YA novels often have lettering that is way too small and my eyes love to mix and switch letters if I don't focus on them. It's just too exhausting to read!)
11:35 It's what I've called in a few conferences I've given on he subject the "PTSD" of modern fantasy: "Poop, treason, sex and disemboweling", which used to be staples of "dark fantasy" are now well ingrained in current trends. Because of course we need extensive descriptions of how some poor guy's bowels empty and the content rolls down their thighs as they're strung up and gutted while their significant other is being graphically violated or something, all due to the scheming of some coward who will be similarly murdered during a graphic sex scene (complete with "nipples" being used approximately 50 times per page), and so on and so forth. That is fantasy now, my friends, good luck finding magic and adventure when people want "guts, tits and politics", as someone in the audience of one of my conferences put it.
When I got to be adult and found that I still preferred YA books to anything I found in the adult Fantasy section, I started to wonder about the distinction. And I realized that YA books can't rely on the crutch of sex, swearing, or extreme violence/gore, so they have to actually tell an interesting story with interesting characters. Having by now migrated to an intake of almost exclusively fanfiction, I don't think it's quite that simple, and Hurt/Comfort is a prevalent genre for a reason. But I still shy from the grosser side of things. (And from fantasy politics, for that matter.) Though my favorite adult fantasy trilogy is The Deed of Paksenarrion, which has an *extensive* and *graphic* torture section... that the text absolutely earns and justifies. It's brutal but it's not gratuitous, and later plot points hinge on the fact that it happened. So even gore can have its place. But it's like swearing: A little goes a long way, and if your characters swear all the time, the points where you *really* need to punch up the dialog are just left flat by contrast. (The one place I noted abundant swearing to have a purpose was in Gran Torino, where it's used to establish the characterization of three separate groups by *how* they swear. I found that interesting.) By the by, it might be instructive to compare modern fantasy trends with the trends in fanfiction, e.g. from this survey: www.fansplaining.com/articles/five-tropes-fanfic-readers-love-and-one-they-hate
Agreed. It's a cultural thing: Fantasy is culturally rooted in tradition, existing romantic themes of mythology and such. Magic is fundamentally running on what feels right based on the cultural cues you picked up during your life. Same for fantasy races. How many non-humanoid fantasy races are there? In contrast in SF authors compete to come up with mindblowing new stuff that noone thought about yet. (Generalizing enormously of course. There are also some sub genres born out of SF that have fallen into some lazy trope patterns like Mil-SF, some Space Opera or Steampunk)
Fantasy is normally inspired by the Middle Ages, so of course it would be limited as many people see fantasy settings rooted in the past. But with sci fi, that could go anywhere. Near-modern earth, future earth, different earth, different planets, ships, space stations, and so much more. We don’t know what the future will be like and we barely know what’s out there in the rest of the universe so there aren’t as many barriers.
This is a really interesting take and I'd love to see Daniel tackle it in one of his debate videos. I think a lot of it is just the current general mystique around extraterrestrial life, so people are a lot more willing to try new, weird things (and publishers are more willing to put them out there.) Fantasy races are a lot more well established, and readers have more preconceived notions of what 'elf' or 'dwarf' culture might be like, vs a race of fish-dragon-cricket creatures from a galaxy away.
@@dancingintherain111 Well, in the context of a given book both are equally made up. And it's not like SF writers never crib each others ideas, there's a staggering number of Klingon knock-offs for instance. But the culture of SF authors seems more about exploring new concepts whereas in Fantasy it seems more about telling stories within a certain toolbox of fantastic tropes.
For those who actually compare the two, your opinion isn’t controversial. At the same time, it makes it a lot easier for sci-fi writers to get wrapped up in their world-building. Fantasy readers can be more forgiving if things are left out in the world as long as they accept the world’s logic. Sci-fi readers generally have a higher standard since more specific elements are needed to understand the culture, but there’s not a general rule for how much or litte information they want/need.
Time wasn't mentioned here, but it stands out a lot when there's a disconnect between page space and diagetic time passage. Like, if something takes a character two seconds to do, don't put a four-page explanation of lore and backstory between them starting and completing the action. If they're on an uneventful lull activity, maybe that's where you drop in those bigger explanations. Let real-world time jibe (to some extent) with in-story time. It's just so strange how many authors put action on pause and break up their own pacing because they're so eager to explain more stuff about their fantasy setting.
Imo one of the most important parts of fantasy. People get so excited to tell the secrets of their world they forget to leave some of them secret. As someone who wrote a million word book that was absolute trash, trust me, you just have to let some of it go. A lot of it, in fact
For some reason, when writing action in the first-person, I like to do it the "RDJ Sherlock" style. E.g., short, minimal phrases mostly consisting of adjectives and verbs.
At the same time on the other side of that coin, I'm getting sick of Mc's pulling game changing events and abilities out of their magic a.. hat. Magic hat.
One thing you need to keep in mind is, several of these self published authors are not even native english speakers. They are publishing in english because the English/US market is larger than all other languages combined. These people might know how to speak english properly, but it is hard to make a book very well written for these people on the first try.
That's true. I'm currently writing a romance novel in German, yet I plan to publish it in English, also. The problem is that I can speak the language fluently, yet when I have to translate something I intricately crafted in my mother tongue to reflect a certain emotion or thought, I just have no idea how that will really sound in English to a native speaker. I don't know all the words or styles of speach necessary for that. Yet I can't hire a translator or I'm literally broke. So what I need to do is go to the DeepL AI, let it translate my entire book once it's finished, go back in sentence for sentence and correct all the mistakes the AI made and all the specific words I want to use, the way they speak, etc. and then get a native speaker to read it and correct it for literally everything else just because they're nice and wanna help a new author out. And even then I have no guarantee that it will actually sound decent. To me? Sure. To a native speaker? For them it might still sound like a highschooler wrote it.
@@midnight8341 Almsot the same for me. My native language is Pertuguese. I am trying to write it directly in english although. What I do is, I think on the sentence and try to search in a pool of sentences that I have from a specific modern author of the same genre, and I try to is there is one or more than convey the same emotional form so I can adjust my sentence. It is a very slow method, but I hope it will make me able to start to do it directly in the near future.
@@tiagodagostini I tried that, too, yes. But I found that for me it feels too much like I'm trying to piece together a new story from the works of other artists and not my own. I can only recommend DeepL, as it is an extraordinary translator AI,worlds better than GoogleTranslate. It can also capture sayings, metaphors and idioms, although not everytime. And it is able to translate to Portuguese, too. You might wanna give it a try, even if it is only for a sentence or two, that you know exactly how you want it to sound in your language and look at all the different ways it could be expressed in English. It has also a real-time editing function, where you can click on a word you want to change, choose a new bit from a selection of suggestions and it will re-translate the sentence from the point you changed to adapt the grammar and wording to what you selected.
Spanish writer here! I tried writing in English and then translating to Spanish, but I feel I have two voices, and they tell the story in different ways. Emotions and figures of speech are particularly hard to translate. I'm fluent in English but far more eloquent in Spanish. So I thought, I'm wasting too much time thinking about these details, when I should be finishing my story.
I hope fantasy evolves into creating unique races with unique cultures once again while using many of the trends in modern fantasy. It is one of the aspects of high fantasy i miss most. I think modern fantasy really has the ability to do something unique when developing new fantasy races. Mistborn for example did such a unique job with linking its magic system with the development of a race. Every revelation about the races present in Sanderson book hooked me deeper and deeper in.
zshoro I’d love to see some interesting twists on more traditional fantasy races too. The Elder Scrolls rather surprisingly makes some interesting twists, like with the crafting-obsessed Orcs or the Dunmer slaver magicians.
@@joshuapowell6822 Yeah. The fantasy worlds aspects and vast races left the novel scape, and went straight to the gaming genre, like Elder Scrolls. There is a reason those games are so well loved. I enjoy them, because it explores the god scape and their impact in the world in the past, and when those aspects show up again. Like with how the Oblivion Event affected the world as the game went forward, and how Mehrunes Dagon affected the world in the past. It is even the same with Skyrim. The cool thing is, the 6th game will show us how Alduin affected the world.
Tolkien elves are quite different the stereotypical elves that is seen in media. Dark elves exist in his works but rather than being evil counterpart of the good elves they are just elves who didn't go to Aman and didn't see the light of the two trees. His elves also eat meat and never were tree hugging vegetarians and only used the woods as hideout, Heck his elves are also obsessed with crafting and smiting (something that is always seen on dwarves).
@@po067typokijtygfdr7 That'll just mean we get the next newsletter going out, which won't really help us read what Brandon said about Daniel in his latest newsletter
One of my problems with Sanderson, and I am a fan, is having to learn a new lexicon for every setting, and have to reread or relisten to sections until I understand the full context. One of the biggest drawbacks is that this results in a lot of exposition dumps in conversation or inner monologue that don't make sense in world because the characters understand these concepts, they're just explaining for the readers. Furthermore it means it results in less fleshed out character backgrounds. Like none of the characters in Stormlight except for the Herdazians seem to have extended families, aside from related central characters. Like we don't even know what house Nevani is from.
I had a problem with these exposition dumps in especially The Rhythm of War. In prologue, in fact. It felt almost at the level of "Previously on Stormlight Archive...". The best example was "Aesudan, Navani's daughter-in-law, Elhokar's wife" in Navani's own head. It really took me out of the story.
@@Parvapinna I think that metric should also factor in whether those words are from a conlang created for the setting and actually make sense, because otherwise it would class things like lord of the rings as the worst fantasy ever what with its' multiple fully fleshed out languages
In that xkcd comic, he specifically excludes Tolkien knowing his particular schtick is that he is a storyteller relating a grand epic which was once in another language and thus needs to basically make up a world whole-cloth with brand new terminology for everything, such as languages and therefore fantasy terms.
I completely agree about your first point, though I feel that using the term "fanfic writing" as a marker of bad writing does a terrible disservice to many fanfics that have way better writing than many contemporary highbrow litfic books I've read. Conversely, many good writers started as fanfic writers, which is absolutely fine. I know the point you were trying to make! Just pointing out that maybe "fanfic writing" does not equate to "bad writing" necessarily.
@@BJGvideos it’s hard af to find. None of it is life changing and fanfiction, if based on someone else’s story, is almost never good. If someone has potential they should write an original story or something not some draco malfoy x reader or whatever y’all call amazing writing
@@user-pg1iw5je7p Some of the great works of literature are fanfiction. Shakespeare wrote regular and real person fiction, for instance. You think he came up with Romeo and Juliet? Heck no, he just popularized figures that were already around (and were probably based on the earlier story of Tristan and Isolde anyway). Earlier tellings even had a happy ending, so his could even fall under the trope of "deconstruction". What makes writing about someone else's characters different now than when he did it? What makes the quality inherently lower to you?
My main complaint with modern fantasy (and fantasy in general) is that the landscape of themes it touches on is still quite diminished, comparing it with science-fiction, historical drama, etc. When will we see a version of Anna Karenina with myths and magic? Something that truly transcends the trappings of fantasy, like Myazaki did with his cinema. I want to see a modern Don Quixote, a modern Journey to the West, modern fantastic tales that grow beyond the fantasy that has become codified since Tolkien. And yes, plenty of the tropes that Tokien codified are still representative of fantasy nowadays: Tribes coming together to fight big evil, subtle criticism of military conflict and industrialism, magic and magical beings going away, etc.
@@michaellayard5045 Wolfe was someone standing with at least one leg firmly in the SF world. Kind of illustrates the problem. Fantasy, High Fantasy in particular was for a very long time bound far more closely to existing themes and mythology (Tolkien clones or ancient myths retold) than SF which incentiviced authors for decades to boldly go where no reader had gone before.
@@doppelrutsch9540 while wolfe is certainly in the sci fi tradition for much of his work, book of the new sun really feels more like fantasy to me and fulfils many of the criteria of the original comment with combining magical elements and mythology in a tale that transcends fantasy
I completely agree! I do love the idea of Fantasy, but I need my books to have thoughtful prose and explore deep themes. I have not yet found that (I'm half-way through The Two Towers, but I'm not attached to any character yet, they seem all so black or white and many elements in the story annoy me, aka Tom Bombadil, the talking trees, the nonstop lyrical songs... But the writing style is indeed beautiful). I'll look up Wolfe, but what other author would you recommend? I don't necessarily need High Fantasy, I need true depth and complexity to the characters and to the plot.
I think most people dont enjoy reading this stuff because it has a very strong taste of black and white thinking. Exploring the possibility that a good character can and maybe already did bad stuff or a bad character did good things ergo maybe they arent classiclly bad and good makes not only the character but also the story and the world in a book more flesh out. Personally I think its just to simple and bland to say „these people bad, these good“. It feels like a cheap excuse to not explore the theme of „you are either bad or good or are you ?“. Of course people will find deeper stuff like grey characters more appealing and interesting because it represents our real life. Most of us arent just good or bad, black and white (its more of a „the system and the people behind it are bad“). But of course thats just only what I absorbed over time and manifested as my opinion.
@@missroundeye7854 i do agree, but I think we should have a good balance of both, so that one dosnt get bland. And i actually do like nuanced characters quite a bit.
I think the problem is that everyone’s heard that nuanced villains are better than flat ones. Of course a well made deep villain is gonna be more morally interesting than Skeletor, but the emphasis is on “well made.” Some authors seem to think that making a nuanced villain goes as far as “They aren’t 100% evil.” And if your villain is just a simple character who is just as morally grey as the protagonist, everything feels the same. Sometimes you gotta write up a crazy evil skeletor villain because then they can more potently drive the plot, rather asking the plot to orbit them while the author circle jerks about how “deep” and “relatable” and “nuanced” they are.
Evil characters could be stand in for systems , that are otherwise hard to portrait, and used as social commentary. Sure some character and personality, but classic bad badies are really good for that. And you can show nuance in others characters and how they get in morally grey areas, or how they struggle there to maintain , or fail so, being the good guy there, and how it haunts them. Like lord of the rings actually had nuance, in the corruption of the ring and how power challenges in everyone their darker impulses. Good guys can be great if they struggle being so , despite everything,
I think when people invent new races they usually just reskin an already existing idea but because of that forget to add personality to it or even their importance. Instead of inventing new ones, reinvent the current ones, their history, dive deeper into their culture and show things that many do not know. Elves, Dwarves, orcs, etc, are just not explored as much as they should be. they are usually human stories with fancy side characters. there are exceptions, which I love. for me to make these races seem *real* is to use real life inspiration, mix it with the culture you make and *naturally* adopt it and tell it in a way that's not a large lore dump, or at least make it an interesting one. the races are supposed to all have their goals and motivations, sometimes even the 'good' races might disagree, politically or even in war. this could give way for 'evil' to eventually attack in weakness or even make the story more complex by adding multiple sides to each bit here. not all dwarves would like elves but some wish peace because they live near elvish borders or trade with them often. war would destroy their income or risk them being attacked, for example. overall: it seems the more basic or lower-tier stories do not really see the dynamic of the world and how to make it interesting both in the macro- and micro-scale
I know I commented this already but Sarah Monettes The Gobline Emperor. Goblins and Elves are two, complex races rather than the stereotypes of angels and slobbering little monsters. It’s about a half-goblin half-elf who is the youngest born of the emperor who dies, and he has to take the throne.
Tropes are easy. Subverting Tropes are also easy, since you just take the trope and reverse it. "Instead of inventing new ones, reinvent the current ones, their history, dive deeper into their culture and show things that many do not know." --- That is a good idea, but hard and requiring work, and alas people are very lazy. :(
As an author, when you said you wanted five new fantasy races I literally cried out in terror. That seems like a very high bar. I took Tolkien's idea of elves and mashed it up with Herbert's Fremen, tossed in some salt from my experience as a cop and viola! Something new? I don't know, I hope so. Five new, custom races just scares the crap out of me. I agree with you about prose. I like it when authors elevate their prose and Tolkein is the master, for me anyway. I find that if I try to make the language pretty I tend to fail, but if I let the work lead me to those places in the story that need elevated prose I think it turns out pretty good. I also consider the character with whom I am working on at the point. I try to give them different voices in the text. I love Tolkien. My book is Tolkienesque and I don't apologize for that. It has other aspects to it as well. I love other authors too, like Herbert. I'm rambling. The coffee is not working. Sorry. Good video btw
The way I get prose to flow is to give a running commentary mixed with free association and just blather for a bit. Then, when I begin to wane, I either go do something else, sleep, or just immediately go over my work and rip it apart and put it back together like a Frankenstein's monster. Much like the monster, it often turns out all the more beautiful and powerful for the atrocity I've performed upon it. Often, making prose pretty is a matter of finding complementary chunks of flesh and sinew to wrap around solid bones rather than a matter of exploiting & divorcing imperfections in & from stone. Rare is the statue prettier for grafting, but rare is the written word so unique that it won't take a graft. Sometimes all you can save of your children is a scrap of flesh or a few bones and itself then becomes a graft; That is a major PITA I tell you what. Nothing like spending hours bleeding out paragraphs only to be left with what amounts to "The *thing* did the *thing* like a *thing*".
yeah... 5 new *unique* fantasy races? not easy. I'm attempting to make a good, high fantasy book, hopefully something that can at least bring Tolkien level worldbuilding to mind. I only have one other fantasy race.
@@basmbee4325 Focus on their role in the story. You can then take associations with that role and pull from such associations for traits. Guess what roles your story needs and create the races around that. What features are necessary? Humanoid or no? What traits do I want these people to embody? Multiple roles or one hat? Making a race is like making a character in this way, though I would argue less constrained. The lack of boundaries can definitely make races more difficult than individuals. Example of thought process. Role: Haughty but noble character--------------------------- Eagles/raptors are noble. Flashy clothes with little jewelry gives the impression of opulence without overindulgence. Furs are traditional, but is bird so feathers? Remember birds can see colors humans can't, so may look very strange to others, bland or clashing. Carnivorous and territorial, make all raptors either lords of territory, direct servants, or adventurers seeking territory. Small levies, no standing army, but vicious and skilled. As non-mammalians give alien customs, friendly when properly plied with offerings, shiny baubles of any stripe or specially prepped meat a la shrike style kabob. Otherwise, casually violent and willing to maim over slight grievances. Give them "the eye" and they will be happy to take it. Friends give offerings, enemies ARE offerings. Highly empathic, able to notice injury or discomfort at a glance, but generally merciless with all but those they would die for. Birdbrain, cunning and inventive, good problem solving, but lacking in common sense and "flighty" or overly curious, easily distracted. Prone to OCD and ADHD. Generally fidgety when not occupied.------------------ I would love to hear about your race and process.
ah, i have found my people. me, with my half-giant elemental constructs, demon-looking people whose only internal organ is one big lung and whose spit is acidic, bug vampires and one deer with 4 pairs of eyes, no mouth, two pairs of wings that's bigger than mt. everest could hope to be in its wildest dreams.
My humanoid moth species that hosts other moths in their lungs, my water bending naturally camouflaged elf species, finned rats, tailed humanoids that live surrounded by packs of random creatures they collect and sustain through magic, seventeen different types of wizards who are all called wizards by nonwizards with no distinction between them despite how much this frustrates the actual wizards, major danger to the eco system harpies, lightning breathing miniature dragons, and lemur hawks: aha, mother! Actually start writing this book! The people will enjoy us!
@@saltations_ okay but elves are so cool I love new twists on them and who can resist tiny dragons and lemurs with wings? Also please describe your fish elves they sound so cool-
I like seeing characters deal with real situations and how they react to them. I especially like characters making a mistake where you think you could also have made that mistake. Or most importantly actions having consequences
I recently started a series that contained the line "Each one of their stories were like a story." when doing introductions. Like I totally get they were going for a comparison to heroic origins common among children's tales but that was a rough one.
I wrote a bad thing when I was 7 called the black dragon 6 years later and I’m writing high fantasy political allegory My early writing sucked and I’m very proud of how far ive come from that XD
Just be aware that something being black equals bad is a stereotype that comes from white supremacy. Not saying you should change your book or title, just be aware of the implications when you do this.
@@flavorblastedg7231 I find it quite interesting that I only stated the title of the book and your mind immediately went to "black thing = bad" If anything, it seems like you've some unconscious biases you should examine before condescendingly preaching to other people you snarky prick
6:32 this entire section I was thinking "stormlight archive shatters this." Fantastical races include: Aimians, Sleepless, The Singers... even the more "human" races have way different cultures. Alethi and Shin for example.
Yeah, demanding someone be like Tolkein or Sanderson is like being mad wr don't have more Leonardo Da Vincis just wandering around. The skillset needed to world build, design an engaging plot, *and* write it well enough for people to read it, is asking a lot. A LOT. It's hard enough to write a good plot without having to come up with different species, magic system, etc. But now we also have to deal with worrying if it's too similar to something else. Yeah. It's a lot. Also, Unless you have something that sparks you, you won't have the energy for it even if you have the skills.
Lighthearted stories with happy endings and villains who are villains just because they're awful people and they want to be that way are things I'd like to see more of. I turn to fantasy stories because the real world sucks and I want to forget about that from time to time and I occasionally want to see genuinely terrible people get what's coming to them.
Villains who're villains to be villains aren't that great to be honest They should be villains for a reason like they want to conquer the world They can still do "evil" things like causing suffering for no other reason that they want to, but their main goal should always be motivated by something decent (hopefully not a sad annoying backstory when they should have just gone to therapy, though properly made sad backstories are fine), like the desire to conquer the world Perhaps they want to create a forest of impaled corpses, that seems fun and could create a lot of conflict within I believe it to be what you meant but I can't read minds
Whenever I hear this argument for escapism => simplistic characters and motivation, I just scoff. What you really do not want is current real life problem analogies in fiction or at most you don't want any moral and ideological conflict that make you think pretentious questions. You never ever ever want characters who just are what they are because. You cannot relate to that. Every single time that happens people criticize it and don't like it. Don't try to achieve escapism through dumbing down your characters, but by making things optimistic and positive. Instead of killing the villain, maybe salvage them. That requires you to write a salvagable villain which is the opposite of simple.
Well, I've been planning a novel series for the past eight years and what you just described is largely what I'm planning. It is more complex than all that, but the point is, I'm trying something "new" by going back to a lot of old traditional tropes that we don't really see these days. If I ever become famous as I want so badly, know that my books are for people like you and that you played a role in helping me to not give up!
@@tuluppampam Yeah, I understand what you mean. A lot of people seem to forget that villains that simply don't have any good intentions are perfectly realistic and are very capable of being interesting characters. It's just that we've seen it done badly enough times that people think it's not a good trope, even though the Joker is one of the most famous and beloved villains in all of fiction even though he knows he's the bad guy and just doesn't care. Also, as a sidenote, one of my villains is specifically meant to be just plain selfish. While his political faction believes that they are a force for good despite all the death and misery they cause, he can actually see the system for what it is and is loyal to it for no reason other than the fact that he knows that it gives him an endless supply of luxury, women, and blood.
*Watches video, fearful that my book is falling into these tropes.* *Remembers that I was already probably a hack and it doesnt matter as long as I do my best.* *???* *Profit*
Sander Bregman Just make a story that you feel is worth telling and you won’t be a hack. Hacks put little effort and care into their stories. Worry about making it a story that will evoke the right emotions you want it to, even if it has a lot of tropes.
@@joshuapowell6822 Oh yeah that's the plan! I'm writing the book I want to read and focusing on enjoying the process and creating something I care about. It's just that doubting my work and pushing through it is an integral part of my process lol
Sander Bregman Everyone has their own methods. I just tend to come up with ideas randomly, develop them, and then gather them all up and see how I can fit it all together. The number of ideas I’ve come up with while reading about history and listening to music is kind of terrifying.
When you mentioned repetitive word choice and structure, I completely agree that this happens fairly often. Song of Achilles did that and I got bored really fast because of it.
On the race part. I heavily agree, and it's why in my WIP I've been keen on developing my own fantasy races, or if I'm doing on a spin on old favourites (werewolves, Vampires and mermaids come to mind for my wip) I'm very much developing my own cultures for them, Backstories and rivalries. I love worldbuilding, and fantasy is my favourite sandbox to play in. To the fantasy not being driven by fantasy, if you ever read this you'll be glad to hear thats the entire reason my story is happening, but it is also incredibly character driven at the very same time.
I wish we saw more magic being done in a unique way rather than just "Ooooh look it's magic". It kind of loses that sense of wonder when there's nothing different about it when compared to other books
Gimme stuff like Magecraft from the Nasuverse Gimme the trope "Magic A is Magic A." Hell, I'm trying to work out the details of my own, and two things I'm going for is elemental affinities and how different regions have different styles of spells, foci, etc... E.g., A lot of Japanese-origin magic is rather heavily based around the use of talismans as a focus. Nordic-origin is more likely to use runes. A lot of Indian-orign spells revolve around the enhancement of a ranged weapon so that it has a unique effect upon impact. (See the Hindu Astras.) The whole "big floating magic circle" style really only came to be in the late 20th century.
Really glad you brought up WoK as an exception to the worldbuilding/races and lore and a cultural focus critique because Sanderson's worldbuilding singlehandedly got me into fantasy novels
I’m so tired of abusive relationships being normalised and romanticised especially in fantasy. It seems like every book relationship, even many friendships, are not considered how non-fic one’s are and nuance just disappears and toxic tropes are expected
Am i going crazy? Incels, Harems, Incest, Polygamy, 5000 year old lolis and its variants are still bad right? But nowadays more and more people advertise stuff with them and more importantly: if i call out those things in Something im the bad guy
@@loturzelrestaurant On one hand, difference between fiction and reality, people liking certain tropes in fiction because of them being fictional and not something they experience IRL, yadda, yadda. On the other hand, it really sucks if you don't like that kind of thing in your fiction and fiction and reality DO influence each other to some degree. But I don't think it's really a recent phenomenon, toxic romance has existed since there was romance and so did harems etc. A lot of victorian writing really liked their women frail and helpless and that was considered very sexy in fiction... The exact trends change, but romance about things that would be deeply fucked up in real life is nothing new. Honestly, so long as they blatantly advertise "Hey, this fiction contains this kind of kinky stuff" I don't have much of a problem with it, the problem really arises when it sneaks up on you and 300 pages into a book you're hit over the head with a toxic codependent romance you really were not looking for.
I know what you mean, but "Dragons are having a renaissance right now," is the funniest mental image
Dragon Renaissance followed by the Dragon Enlightenment and Dragon Industrial Revolution.
Wings of Fire. That's it. That's all I wanted to say.
Thank Kobayashi-san for that :P
Ran a tabletop gaming store for a decade. If you put a dragon on anything it would sell instantly.
@@howardmao3331 those would make awesome books IMO: imagine dragons dealing with the sort of societal upheaval that occurred in the 1880s or the enlightenment. They would run into populations limits really early and how to deal with it as a race that is effectively immortal would be a fun topic.
Modern Fantasy fans be like: "Breakface McMurderstab is one of the most morally subtle characters in all of western literature"
Artemis Entreri?
Ninefingers is morally subtle good sir! You will take that back!
@@brandonturner6890 THA BLOODY NOINE!
😂😂🤣🤣
Depending on the context, subtlety isn't exactly necessary for a great story.
Sauron was anything but subtle.
Though it does seem that most people are looking to make everything as morally grey as possible these days.
I really agree with you about fantasy being more a setting instead of having any impact on the narrative. I feel like I see that a lot
It's quite interesting, because I'm not much into fantasy reading right now, but every time I think of writing a plot for a RPG game or a short story and compare my idea to other stories I have seen or heard about it really seems to me that the fantastical elements driving the plot seem to have decreased a lot. Although I think it happens more in literature and other mediums than RPGs. I really wonder why.
I feel like this phenomena has a lot to do with the author's confidence level. They will usually start out with a decent fantastical engine, but as the series moves on they tend to trend towards safer and safer decisions, eventually ending up as great story, but with very mundane day to day, with the fantastical elements making a nice backdrop that sets them apart.
At least with novels. I know it's not for everyone, but I find with Shounen Anime in particular, the fantasy often takes center stage.
EDIT: comma
I'd like to add to that.
In my experience, modern fantasy feels less "magical". More authors lean heavily towards hard magic systems, more authors try and create more "realistic" settings.
Nothing wrong with either of those, but I feel like there's an over-reliance on such things. Not enough feeling of wonder and awe, not enough archetypes.
I actually quite like this. Of course, setting is my favorite part of fantasy so maybe that is why.
When I studied Creative Writing at college, my school and professors were super against "genre fiction," meaning fantasy, sci-fi, horror, pretty much anything that isn't non-fiction or realistic fiction. We were allowed to delve in "magical realism" a little bit, but no one wanted to because our syllabi pretty much said we'd get a zero if our stories had magic, talking animals, etc. One professor I took near the end of my degree didn't care and told us to write whatever we want and encouraged us to write fantasy and magic.
But all of that is to say, I feel like education can play a factor into some of the changes in writing we're experiencing. We were told things like "you aren't popular enough to break the rules" and "fantasy/magic is just a cover up for bad characters and writing." Like what you said about there not being enough narratives being driven by the fantasy and magic. That's exactly what I was taught NOT to do. Everything has to be character-driven, everything in the story has to be pushed forward by the character (because clearly in real life, things don't just happen to people amirite lol). In reality, they should have taught us more about how to balance action-driven and character-driven plots in our narrative instead of just telling us we can't do it, or it's not "serious" writing, or you can learn to write fantasy after you master writing non-fantasy.
Getting a degree in creative writing made me more uncertain than ever about writing, in fact lmfao. If anyone's doubting themselves as a writer, just take your time and get to learn who your writer is.
And check out Brandon Sanderson's lectures on yotube, they're waaay more valuable than my degree lol!
Thanks for sharing. Also for the Brand Sand tip 😊
Coverup for bad writing? No, at least not in my experience. And I read and finish between 300 and 400 books a year if you count rereads. You know what's a coverup for lazy/bad character writing? Rich people. No problem solving or growth as a person when everything can be solved with money.
I dropped out of a creative writing class in part because the textbook called genre fiction boxed cake mix and I just. Fuck my 1000 page world building Bible I guess. Fuck all that research I did on history and societal cause and effect I guess.
Also I had to tell a fellow student to never use the term "erection of justice" again.
That is why I dropped my creative writing degree halfway through. I learned more from reading a crap ton of fantasy books than I ever did in class.
@@thepinkestpigglet7529 Right, I just hate how dismissive they were of the entirety of "genre writing." Sometimes they would try to be nice about it and say, well no one gets genre right the first time so you have to learn character driven fiction before you can write fantasy.
And idk, I need the context for "erection of justice" now XD
I'm just tired of the torture porn.
Way too much torture porn. Truly tiresome.
I've been avoiding those books.
Can anyone who feels this way elaborate more? the more the longer winded, etc...the better. vent, ramble, etc...i'll read it all
@@1Sky1 Sure! I didn't mean actual torture porn, but just fantasy novel where characters go through horrible things (slavery, physical/mental abuse, sometimes even rape or implied rape) just one after the other and the author really seems to linger on the horror of it all in a way that starts to feel a little bit off putting. Especially when done to female characters. Also usually the character comes out the other side more or less just fine-- perpetuating the idea that horrible abuse may actually be good because it "makes us stronger." A lot of fantasy stories have this a little bit (heroes have to face adversity) but it gets tiresome when it's taken too far or becomes too similar to actual torture porn (I'm thinking of the Sword of Truth series here).
Related are entire fantasy worlds that are incredibly cynical and basically everyone is just flat out evil or motivated solely by self-interest. It started by making fantasy more "realistic" which is fine but again some works just take it way too far.
@@toychristopher i hear what you're saying. I'm writing my first novel (first anything, really) and i saw myself almost fall into that mindset. Then i thought, "Is that what I want to read?" Nope.
When you read a 14 book series that’s supposed to be all about some reborn dragon, yet there isn’t a single dragon in it except on some dumb farm boy’s arms. :(
Ha! Never thought of it!
I was cheated! CHEATED I say!
Since that, I haven't read any more fantasy, sticking to classics...
The first 6 books in the wheel of time were interesting and entertaining but after that it became stereotypical and I read the whole series it was a torture at the end.
@@bighands69 Dude, I LOVED WOT but lost steam after the 4th book. I gave up somewhere in the middle. There are too many other things to do besides read a never-ending story. I still love the start of WOT.
"We are seeing low fantasy, focusing on just humans, but dragons are a big deal"
I think we can all agree that we can pinpoint Game of Throne's success for this
* Skyrim Flashbacks *
and Realms of the elderlings; At least in France, prior to GoT hitting the mainstream, Roben Hobb was more widely known and read than GRR Martin.
@@maximeteppe7627 I'm not blaming any literature for this as much as I'm blaming purely the show of GoT, since it became so incredibly big.
As someone whose name directly translates to prancing dragon, I could not be happier about the dragon trend 😂 but yes it’s getting to be a bit much
Dragons a cheap way of making your stuff fantasy
My creative writing teacher in college HATED fantasy and anything that couldn't have plausibly happened in real life. It made my grade suffer because I am exclusively a fantasy writer. I wouldn't have signed up for her class had I of known that I'd be docked points on my creative writing homework for "being unrealistic"...
"Creative writing" but the its limited to the teacher's creativity
I hate teachers like that. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with being forced out of your comfort zone and being made to adapt.
Besides, nothing gonna stop you from writing fantasy in your spare time.
Flashback to my sixth grade creative writing assignment where I followed the prompt but got a 15/20 because the teacher said it "wasn't what she was expecting" . . . It's ridiculous. You can't ask for people to be original and then get upset that they do something "too creative"
@@1nONLY_DRock still bad if they only force one style of writing. If the teacher wanted the students to get out of their comfort zone they would give different tones and setting each time and not just "dont write fantasy"
My creative writing teacher was like that. He acted so childish, saying that all scifi, and fantasy were the same, and all terrible. Someone did a historical fiction and he straight up threw a fit over it until the student assured him it wasn't fantasy. Every story I did was scifi and fantasy just to spite him. Best part of my college experience was him admitting to me that he was wrong about the genres
"Lowered bar for prose" - I'm so glad you went there. I'm also not a snob when it comes to prose, but bad prose can be distracting. And it's so preventable. Get an editor or some beta readers. Watch some Sanderson creative writing lectures. There's no such thing as perfect writing, but that doesn't mean writers shouldn't take the time to improve their craft.
Exactly. Writing is a craft. The architects of the Eiffel Tower never settled with a low bar.
The thing is, Sanderson's prose isn't amazing either. That's not to say it's bad, it's competent and gets the job done, but it's lacking enough in voice that I struggle to stay engaged often. But yeah, I agree that competent and adequate prose shouldn't be that much of a reach.
DRLC exactly lol I’m rereading stormlight archive after coming from Tyrant Baru Cormorant and Sanderson’s prose in comparison is.... not great. He’s a plot and idea first author.
Me too! It's a large part of why I can't read a lot of modern fantasy because I can't get past the awful writing.
Yes, yes. It had to be said
The lack of hope. We used to focus on heroes now they're just always taken from us. It's ok to believe in, and have people live up to, our expectations.
I recently read a story about a kind and humble man, who was reincarnated with power that matched his goodness, and quite a few of the negative reviews amounted to the character being too saintly. In a story about a saint.
I feel every story has a place and cliche is a matter of time and saturation. For a time, pure heroes with small flaws were cliche, then the brooding anti-hero, now we have the villain protag and the broken ace, but I am starting to see the humble man, neither notably evil nor heroic, appear quite a bit, so maybe the next overdone trope will be the pure hero again.
@@flinfake I hope it is because I have been rewatching Superman The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and have watched some animated DC movies and I love a lot of those heroes because they make me wanna be like them. I *want* someone to look up to. There is nothing wrong with that!
A lot of people want relatable characters more than anything, but they have been turning anything that isn't relatable down. It sucks.
Especially now. I get that this could be a reflection of the times, but gosh, what some folks need is something that gives them hope.
I believe we'll see a resurgence in folk heroes as an antidote to the superhero/anti-hero burn out.
I think that's less of something to do with Modern Fantasy and more just to do with the Modern World ...
this
I think saying that some prose has fallen to the level of fanfic writing is an insult to fan fiction. I read some fanfic in my middle school years with better prose than some actually published books
Sometimes i actually wish people wrote more like fanfiction because of this exact reason 😂 I've read so many that handle more complex, thought-provoking themes than most published books
People who say its bad obviously haven't dug very deep
I think the problem here is that fan fiction is by far more saturated with bad writing on a magnitude that far eclipses traditional novels. Of course there is good fan fiction out there. 50 Shades of Grey proved that. The problem here is that fan fiction tends to be written by people who know the world that they are writing about but know next to none of the nuances of actual writing as well as a lack of understanding when it comes to the deeper systems in place for the world they are creating. They see one aspect of what they are trying to write about but they don’t dig to set the ground work. They tend to just throw their self insert and have a ball. I’m gonna repeat for the people that didn’t read above: there are good fan fiction writers out there. The issue here is that there are just too many people who use fan fiction as a sort of training for crafting their own stuff and their training pants flood the interwebs with all the other training pants and it all tends to smell really bad and the few good bodies of work just don’t provide enough febreeze to mask the scent, hence why people tend to see fan faction as mostly bad writing. ((Also, longer writing doesn’t equal better writing. There are books only 50 pages long that have better and far more substantial writing in it than a book the size of a Stormlight book.))
Can you give some examples?
To this day the only piece of literature that made me cry is a fanfiction. Also I still don't know how one in particular that deals with REAL FBI stuff wasn't published, that shit was more true and reaal than 95% of series and movies out there about crime.
@@zedorian6547 I'm sorry but did you just say that 50 shades aka the most cliche and horribly written thing I've ever read (and I have over 500 fanfics on my kindle) proved something????
You know what i would like to see more: Mediterranean settings for fantasy. I am tired of "tavern tolkien d&d" like northern Europe fantasy stories, and would love to see more new mythological creatures trend, rather than dwarves, elves or dragons...
Try the Thief/Queen of Attolia - they're AWESOME
@@Greentrees60 I- The fact that you've listed only two of the books rather than the first or the series name-
They are good though!!
@@MouseySky sorry, though to be fair there's a very high degree of overlap between the name of the series and what I said (The Queen's thief). I should have mentioned the author's name though - Megan Whalen Turner FTW!
@@Greentrees60 Oop- Nah it's fine lol
I just thought it was funny
Absolutely agree, Megan Whalen Turner ftw!!
I have an idea for a story with a race based on Dryads, maybe some Naga-like snake people too. I agree though, tired of the singular story setting. All fantasy recently has either been of the Tolkien "northern Europe bar/sword/kingdoms" variety, or the Riordan/Rowling "modern setting but with magic!" variety.
Possibly a controversial opinion: Game of Thrones (the TV show, not A Song of Ice and Fire the series) is to blame for a lot of this. Over the last couple decades with Harry Potter, LoTR movies, etc. fantasy has become more and more mainstream. GoT firmly planted fantasy within mainstream media. Now, publishers are looking to cash in on the GoT hangover. Thus, they can take more risks with bad prose because the possible reward is much higher than before.
Also, what did people love so much about GoT? The characters. The show has white walkers, dragons, and magic, but the characters battle over the iron throne drove the story. The fantasy elements did not. So now people are looking to copy GoT's character-driven story instead of Tolkien's style where the fantastical element drove the plot.
What doesn't GoT have? Non-human races with developed cultures and mythologies. Sure, there's the children of the forest, but they don't have a developed culture or mythology and barely make an appearance.
I think A Song of Ice and Fire is really excellent. Other than the poor prose trend, the others all appear in the GoT show.
Tl;dr Everyone's trying to copy GoT
I think there are too many fantasy novels that feel the need to give us "THE WORLD." Countries, races, species, politics, wars, maybe even everyone teaming up to defeat Satan-kun. Politics and larger world-building can be good but I like to treat them as a bonus. I prefer when the stakes in the story are nonpolitical. More personal.
Sam Hess what’s wrong with Harry Potter
@@tiffprendergast Nothing is wrong with Harry Potter. I mention it because of it's immense mainstream popularity and it's role in bringing fantasy into the mainstream.
This is absolutely true. I'll add that it also fucked with the public's perception of history, which creates a feedback loop with fantasy's medieval setting. Too many people believe everyone in the Middle Aged were either shit caked peasants or sociopathic lords. The show cut out many more wholesome moments, and GRRMs descriptions of cities and castles as living places. People lived full lives before the Industrial Revolution.
I think the GoT, the show, was super mainstream itself. Everyone and their mother watched that show. So I don't think it necessarily created legions of fantasy book readers. Now, I think that is a subset of people who got into fantasy books after having watched the show and then read ASoIaF. If anything, that just led to more of an interest in "similar" grim-dark/epic/medieval themes. But again, I don't think the show was responsible for such an influx of fantasy readers that it changed the genre. If anything, fantasy was getting darker and grittier even before GoT. You could argue that ASoIaF had far more of an influence than the show. And even if the show had any such influence, it certainly shouldn't be blamed for the bad prose. Honestly, I don't think bad prose is anything new. I've read fantasy from every decade, starting with the 50s, and I can assure you that--as far as prose goes--you've got the good, the bad, and the ugly across the board. Perhaps there's an argument that the publishing game has changed drastically nowadays. There is just SO much more "stuff" out there since anyone can put their stuff on the internet and find a couple of readers. Back in the day, you were only exposed to what you read in magazines or heard from friends (i.e. the popular stuff). So that could be why it seems that prose is so much worse today. You're just exposed to more garbage than before. But there's always been garbage and there's always been gold.
I realize that this was only a small remark, but some fanfiction pieces are as beautifully and skillfully written as good original fiction. It's also a great training ground for writers, especially in the fantasy genre.
Yeah but you can always tell which fanfiction authors have the potential in their first 3 works
The majority are so piss poor it hurts to read
@@V2ULTRAKill agreed. This is why I hold onto my good ones with an iron grip
Thanks for saying so! It makes me sad when I see someone putting down fanfic as just bad writing all together . It’s a big category with lots of different kinds of writers so it’s hard to make a claim that applies to all of it
I was thinking the exact same thing! There are some fanfiction I've read that are so good I wish I could buy them as an actual book. Fanfic authors are terminally underappreciated and they do it all for free, legends.
@@frankleblanc8730 if you know where to look, good fan fiction is actually easy to find
For me the biggest problem is lack of proper editing. Especially when it is self-published. My cousin wrote a fantasy novel and she clearly did not have it edited by anyone. It really showed. Maybe just because I was an editor, but it annoys me when, as you said, the author uses the same words over and over again. Or when the first nine chapters are full of useless nonsense before the author gets to the actual story. For instance, my cousin's novel had the protagonist shower over twenty times in just one book. Not a joke. And it really had nothing to do with the story, it was just filler. I agree with all the points you made, but lack of editing is definitely my least favorite thing in modern writing.
TWENTY TIMES????
Unless the character is amphibian and hydration is important, the only time it's that important is if it has a plot point! Graaah!
Agree: if editors exist, there is a reason.
A someone who write stories myself, I really feel the need for someone to review my work: even if that person is not a professional, he or she is usually still able to provide some useful feedback, from something formal like spelling mistakes and poor structure of a sentence to aspects such as pacing, plot contrivancies or inconsistences, characters acting in what appears to be out of character.
@@neoqwerty I actually made a fantasy race that's amphibian and they're design (as well as some of their abilities) are based on axolotls. When they're away from sources of water, and their not in a damp environment, their body usually tries to absorb water from the air or try it's best to contain the moisture it currently has which requires them to use less energy. That's why most of them usually carry a source of water when traveling.
I'm still currently trying to finish writing them. I call them Axylids (my sister commented on how that sounded like a word for a kid of this species).
In need of an editor, if interested reply back. Thanks!
technically speaking, a showering scene could be relevant if the character comes to some important revelations or has a mental breakdown while doing it (or if it's there to establish a steamy romance and provide fanservice lmao)... but TWENTY TIMES!? how even...
I absolutely hate stories where the main character/characters never have their morality put into question or challenged in any meaningful way. It's even worse when the authors write a hypocrite that lacks any moral sturdiness but still play that character as if they are in the right. Even more so when said character moralizes to other characters that do the exact same thing, but the author paints them as the bad guy/girl/men/lady.
Yeeah I agree. Even further, I think that when the conflict of the story is also a conflict within the character(s) themselves: that stuff is gold!
they are "the things they've done are good because they are the good guys", not "they are the good guys because they've done good things"
Then I suggest you don't read any chinese webnovels or anything related to it as all their mc's definitive traits are literally this.
This is why the new He-man was so terrible.
You should read six of crows, like all six of the main characters have moral struggles at one point all in the first book as well so I think you’d like it
The How to Train Your Dragon Books by Cressida Howell were incredible in terms of World Building and creating a new variety of dragon species. When you discovered a new species, it was like if Pokemon and Animal Planet had had a baby it was so satisfying. The format is also super creative, as it's told like a series of entries long after the main story actually took place
Yes, I love how to train your dragon!
Yes, but the films just messed up. Books forever!
@@laurelelasselin What do you have against the films?
@@stefanalexanderlungu1503 They aren't anything like the books. Full stop.
@@laurelelasselin both are enjoyable, but are in no way the same story
This video kind of encompasses one of my biggest anxieties as a writer. It feels like all fandoms these days are demanding more and more from people, and literature fans are no different. I don't read a whole lot, but I love literature, and I will just dive into a book every now and then. I write as a hobby, but I hope to someday publish some of my stories, and I just know that I am going to hear critiques claiming that I am copying authors I have never heard of or comparing me to the highest echelon of literature when I am just like, "Hey. I wrote a story. I put years of work into it. I hope you like it." There is almost this expectation that all authors think that their story is the best thing in the world, or that publishing your story is claiming something. And that's not always the case.
I feel that, im working on something rn for me and maybe would like to try to publish is and hope someone likes it without being told im copying or unoriginal. Im writing shit i like and tryna make it my own as well, changed my plot 3 times and the whole layout in 2 weeks
@@tcgxscout5863listen y'all I simply want to feel like the story is something deeply and profoundly compelling to you, the writer, cuz I can always tell as a reader if a scene was written from the heart or not. Originality is good but it doesn't replace authenticity. Then of course just ensure you're doing your best to incorporate writing best practices (a plot that works, mixing up sentence structure, showing not just telling, etc) and people like me will buy it. Especially if it's fantasy cuz I love the immersion.
Don't be afraid to be inspired by other works. Dirty little secret, go back and copy something from a hundred years ago and most people are going to be like "Wow! So creative, new and refreshing!" But don't like actually steal it wholesale though. I'm just pointing out that archetypes, mythologies, narrative styles etc can be lifted from old tales and brought into a new context or setting to do really cool stuff. Maybe it's time for a Golden Age sci-fi renaissance or we need a strong heroic protagonist to tackle problems head on vis-a-vis Beowulf or Conan. Genre mashups are great. If an author or a franchise speaks to you and has heavily influenced your passions and hobbies then carry on the torch. Build on the groundwork prepared for you. Whatever inspires you just take the time and effort to make it yours. Inject your voice, your vision. Like @Ricardo_Lopez said, authenticity comes from the heart. Write from the heart, edit with the brain.
I feel the exact same way right now. So hopefully hearing this reassures you that a lot of people understand how hard it is to write stories now a days
That expectation didn't just spawn from thin air.
Writing is a lot like music. Some people compose beautiful classical scores. Others write pop songs. There is room in the writing scene for all types.
You can see that well in this comment section. People want different things from fantasy
Yesss! I really enjoy the simplistic writing style and not over world building of YA fantasy now a days… but I respect his opinion
But pop songs can also be wonderfully composed, but I understand what you mean
and the majority slam the keyboard with all 3 elbows
I like that anology. 👍
I think my main gripe against the modern fantasy is the over use of the "___ was the best thief" or "___ wanted to be the greatest assassin". Roguedark I would call it
That’s a really common trope in fantasy genre manga and Japanese light novels
My Main character is a 14 year old orphan that is mostly disliked by a lot of villagers
I think it's a fine as the character's motivation to be the best. But definitely is boring if they already are...
That's definitely not new the sillmarillion is absolutely lousy with the greatest things and people and feats that ever were.
Show don't tell. It's a fairly simple rule that folks seem unable to follow.
There's never a "best" anyway. We called Bruce Lee the best martial artist ever, yet the Wing Chun master probably could've whooped him. It doesn't matter if the character's "the best," it matters what they do
The one thing I've always adored about Tolkien's books is the fact that the world feels like it's alive. Like he'll spend pages talking about Ents and Entwives, but he'll give us nothing about why Galadriel giving Gimli some of her hair was such a big deal. He treats that like as if it's common knowledge, but that the whole Ents isn't. That sort of thing makes his world feel alive when you compare it some modern day fantasy books. Like for example, the Hunger Games comes across as a very empty world unless the characters are directly interacting with it.
Is lords of the rings book series boring to read my friend? I have bought them together with hobbit and some people are saying it is amazing and some are saying it is unbelievably boring. Cheers
@@romanbatista3286 The beginning for both can be a bit boring. But it picks up after that. Personally my biggest struggle has always been getting through Gandalf's speech at Rivendell. It's something like five pages long in my copy.
@@GiveMeYourEyes947 thanks a lot .happy to know that it is worth reading .have you tried wheel of time ?
And we'll never know whether elrond's sons returned to valinor or not :(
I think there is an insight in Unfinished tales as to why Galadriel's hair is a big deal: the greatest (debatable) elf that ever lived asked her for a single thread of her hair, but she refused him because she sensed that he was motivated by pride and arrogance. Instead she gave gave three hair threads to Gimly eons later because she knew that his intentions were coming from genuine admiration and respect, not from greed and possessiveness.
Lore-wise her hair is a shard of the blessed, far gone times of basically heaven on Middle-earth. Read the firts couple of chapters of Silmarillion for more information on the matter.
Also, strategically it was a smart move that helped to somewhat remedy the thousands of years of discord between dwarfs and elves.
I picked up “Unnatural Magic” by CM Waggoner because it had a female troll as one of the two POVs. Like there’s hardly any fantasy stories nowadays where the central character is not human or mostly humanoid. Sure, fairies kinda count, but it’s been overdone and they are basically insanely hot models with pointy ears. We need more creatures as main characters!
That sounds amazing. A female troll as main character breaks all the usual rules for MC
Heh, if you want that (creatures as MCs), look up a bunch of different Light Novels from Japan. There's a lot more there than in the US.
I want a centaur main character
"So I'm a spider, so what?!" is right up your alley then. Japanese light novels has been doing this for close to 10 years now.
There's even an anime of the novel out at the moment.
@@DaultonYoung i tried to watch so I'm a spider, and other types like that. Could not stand them. The main cast is way too ditsy and stupid and moe-moe anime girl cutesy
"So I'll be doing that video as well" Oh no, Daniel is lost in time, he posted that video yesterday!!!
Yes. He's Quantum leaping himself.
He is four parallel universes ahead of us.
He's clearly inverted, traveling backwards through time. Christopher Nolan would approve.
I think the issue with the lack of modern high fantasy is that Tolkien wasnt trying to write a high fantasy when he created it. He drew from the heroic epic tradition and wrote it in the prose of a pre-modernist. If fantasy just aims at being fantasy it wont develop but just develop another replica of itself.
Agreed, I view similar to Matt Mercers effect on DnD. Huge amounts of people are trying to emulate his DM style and campaign style. While this trend isn't inherently bad everyone is limited by ability.
If I remember correctly, while fantasy has existed for a very long time, the genre of high fantasy was created by Tolkien
@@Johnmaloney1962 More or less. The elements all existed before him, but he brought them together and effectively codified them.
@@stormisuedonym4599 I find that fact really depressing because in Tolkien's world magic and what the Wizards did were not the same thing. The Wizards were angels in human form sent to prepare humanity for the struggle against Sauron and Dwarven/Elvish 'magic' were considered other influences we don't understand. High fantasy feels like a misunderstanding of his work
I would say use more other type of fantasy races. I’m tired to hell about Fae this and Fae that! How about Yokai? How about Nymphs? How about Celestial maidens of Ancient China? Gumiho of Korea? That stuff is interesting! Fae stuff can be interesting, but when it’s done to death and everyone is basically copying off each other with no major differences, yeah, no. Sorry.
And not folding every kind of nature-based spirit or entity under the banner of fae. Let the cultures that spawned these other creatures stand on their own instead of lumping them in with the fair folk.
Yes, please!
I happen to write about Yokai :)
I’m pretty sure that Youkai are quite mainstream, at least if you’re into Japanese/Japanese inspired media.
Saeran Choi I agree. These days they are rather popular. Wicked Fox and it’s sequel Vicious Spirits (which was just released) are about the Korean variety. There is the Shadow of the Fox trilogy as well about Japanese Kitsune. Those are the ones most popular that I could think of off the top of my head but when it comes to the Big 5 traditional publishers these were the only examples I could think of. Self publishers (like myself) however, are writing a lot more about yokai and, of course, wuxia, then the Big 5 are and we fill a niche because of this.
Fantasy is one of the sons of Romanticism. Romanticism dedicated everything to the search of the infinity, of the sublime. Prose and sense of wonder are two core concepts that Modern Fantasy lost with extreme hard magic systems and dry, functional prose and too much realism.
Yes, I agree. Ever read Northrop Frye? He said as much, if I remember.
Arianne ó DP Ari The main problem as far as I see it is that some people try to force reality into fiction, forcing modern issues into settings where it can’t properly fit or demand that imaginative and creative works include parts of reality for people who have little to no imagination.
Arianne ó DP Ari Worst thing is that you can add elements of real life into fiction and make it really interesting. Hell, reality is just as incredible and strange as fantasy and fiction in general, but people try and force reality into fiction as a way to spread some weird political views or modern issues instead of using those events as inspiration for interesting story elements.
@@Bluestlark magical realism is part of the problem. It takes the magic completely out of fantasy
I wonder how much Wicher series lost in translation. While everyone seems to mention the gritty, dark elements of the setting, there is a lot of powerfull scenes among the books thet evoke the classic fantasy sense of wonder
Geralt and Jaskier catching a glimpse of underwater city inhabited by fish-people no one even knew existed. The mist on the frozen lakes of Nal Trachta. Knights Errand of Toussain rescuing Geralt's party at the mountain pass. The unicorn coming from the mists on a lake to aid Ciri in her moment of need. Just to name the few. It proves that with enough skill you can mix gritt and realistism with wonder and still end with solid consistent product.
Everyone: I want unique races
Me who likes world building: ummm erm aaaaaaa elf!
Elves suck. DORFS FOR THE WIN! CHUNKY BOIS with EPIC BEARDS!!
@@DonVigaDeFierro How about we get some
H I B B O T S?
@@MarioKonga How about something f l o o f y
@@MarioKonga Got any pocket Cthulhu’s?
easy: just create a new world, completely detached from reality, without any humans.
I love the fact that dragons are becoming more and more prevalent in the modern fantasy genre, and as someone who loves stories about dragons very much, it's a little disheartening to see that it's almost one of those "trends" that is only becoming popular because it's a "cool" thing to have in the story. I've been reading several books which have dragons in them, and much like the points Daniel mentions, there's just not a lot of good writing and the stories end up bland, especially when the character is a dragon "just to be a dragon."
So like a token character?
Yes this is such a ridiculous trend. It's funny, there are more fantasy stories than ever and yet they feel blander than ever at the same time. I think you've hit the nail on the head; "just because they're cool" isn't a good enough reason to include something in your narrative and world. It should have substance.
It's been years since I read them, but I recall the dragons in Eragon having such personality. I figured there would be a lot of emulation of that but it often feels so forced or just off
I enjoy dragons, not a fanatic but they're pretty cool, but my biggest gripe is that people never seem to make dragons enough of a threat, they're always a "tough fight", when in reality they'd be hell turned to a hungry beast that's trying to kill you, they should be feared, the person fighting them should be mortally horrified, not just having a little bit of a rough time at things
I enjoy dragons, not a fanatic but they're pretty cool, but my biggest gripe is that people never seem to make dragons enough of a threat, they're always a "tough fight", when in reality they'd be hell turned to a hungry beast that's trying to kill you, they should be feared, the person fighting them should be mortally horrified, not just having a little bit of a rough time at things
I enjoy dragons, not a fanatic but they're pretty cool, but my biggest gripe is that people never seem to make dragons enough of a threat, they're always a "tough fight", when in reality they'd be hell turned to a hungry beast that's trying to kill you, they should be feared, the person fighting them should be mortally horrified, not just having a little bit of a rough time at things
“There are some really good Tolkien children”
Oh boy he’s gonna bring up wheel of time
As he should! The Wheel of Time is fantastic.
@@luxintenebris1776 Idon't know wheel of time seems to run in circle. So many books that are going nowhere....
That's intentional, remember - The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
Does it have an ending yet? I stopped reading at book 23 or so.
@@lettherebedragons8885 the series is finished. There's only 15 books in total.
I feel that a lot of the lack of new races as such is that people are building more complex human cultures and societies, and they tend to fill the space that custom races used to. Maybe im insane, but thats my take.
That might be true in some cases but most human races boil down to:
copy of >> insert historical nation here
@@aramhalamech4204 they're much better in the books and in The World of Ice and Fire
that may be a factor...but as an artist/writer that lives and breathes worldbuilding (with multiple non-human races) i can say that its probable the main reason people dont invent inhuman races is it -way- harder to do. it requires so many complex considerations for the differences in physical and mental attributes and how it influences the way they live, act, and interact with the other races and the world. then there is designing them visually, their anatomy-specific clothes, tools, preferences in architecture, not to mention social norms which might be heavily influenced by their biology (what if they have a 'queen bee' social structure? what if they live for hundreds of years? what if their pregnancies last for a decade?)...designing all of this and making sure it all integrates takes a VERY long time and stupid amounts of work. as a personal example, ive been actively developing my fictional world for 15 years - not very efficient when youre trying to write a book biannually, like most professional writers do.
Its harder to relate to not humanoid races, probably are like humans but with a gimmick, that hopefully factors in the worldbuilding.
@@aramhalamech4204 to be fair Game of Thrones is a TV series. In the actual books almost every human culture is given a lot more depth and character. Almost every place the POV characters go is made to feel like a living, breathing culture with a unique history, complex traditions and distinctive people.
Except for the Dothraki. Those guys are just stereotypical Honorable Horse Lords in both the show and the novels.
Another pet peeve: endless series where all the books are 700 pages plus in length. How about standalone novels once in awhile?
I'm working on a standalone Urban Fantasy about Shadow People! :)
Or at least decent finales or cliffhangers.
Everything written for series I’ve read recently has just run out of…
Or what about a nice reasonable 300-400 page book?
When I see there are 4000+ books in the series I get put off.
I'd be happy with semi-standalone, personally. It's nice to see stories set in the same universe, but with little else connecting them save maybe some characters.
I was originally planning a high fantasy novel using the traditional races; humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. with the protagonist being an elf. But eventually I just thought it was played out and just bad, so I started creating a new setting where these traditional races don't exist, as well as there being no humans, in a way. Humans would be largely extinct, having been replaced by this magically/alchemically created race, originally humans of conquered lands who were forcibly converted into these specialized forms to serve as more efficient slave labor. What's more, actual humans, while existing, due to an enormous slave revolt were largely wiped out, so the one remaining "true human" nation needs to create artificial humans, essentially homunculi, to try and keep the race going. Problem being these artificial humans are unstable, sickly and becoming increasingly weaker with every generation.
This honestly all sounds really interesting, at least on paper
Let me second the lone response I can see here. This does sound interesting, and fertile ground for a rich story. You've got a great backstory that creates a compelling world that can be slowly revealed. Awesome way to hook a reader for a setting like this. Sort of like the usual fallen ancient empire, but a fallen ancient *species*. Great morality play as well. And an interesting setting to explore character. Almost a very scifi way to do it where you explore human sociology through the lens of aliens. Plotting could be almost anything. The most difficult part (depending on your skill level at various aspects of writing) would be creating interesting, compelling characters.
They way I can tell you have an interesting concept is if it instantly sparks an avalanche of ideas, and your outline here did that. I hope you've done something with this.
Please do something with this, and come back here afterwards to let us seeeee, good luck for real
Sounds like some of the Warhammer Drukhari lore. I like it.
Neat, like the idea
One of the things I've definitely noticed is the fantasy genre has moved away from Tolkein, and seemingly towards GRRM as it seems many newer stories are trying to be this dark and gritty A Song of Fire and Ice like fantasy
Thing is: Ice and fire/GoT isn't all that dark. The battles, fights and the Violence are very comparable to Tolkiens work. The only difference is that GRRMs characters are all "morally grey" (=borderline sociopathic).
@@aramhalamech4204 Oh I know, to the average person its certainly among the darkest they've seen though
That is not just fantasy. For the last 15 to 20 years all western entertainment has been moving to dark and gritty. It is part of why I stopped watching most modern TV shows and movies.
Lotr and The Hobbit maybe a little bit cute, but The Silmarillion and its three children are really dark. Not as dark and gross as Martin's but dark in a sophisticated way. I still can't get over the death of Beleg. It hit harder than the red wedding
and ppl misinterpreted asoiaf completely 💀 eg. Netflix trying to adapt Avatar by aging up the characters, adding gore and s*x scenes as if the og story isn't depressing enough. grrm is defined his characters paying the price for whenever they go wrong often de*th.. Six of crows is a pretty good YA fantasy with good characters
that's why people are moving to anime,writers here just think morally grey means horrible people who kill for fun
Yeah I read a lot of YA fantasy and the theme always seems to be a female lead that is secretly royalty/'chosen one' and there is a steamy romance on the side. Nothing else is really compelling or built up in the story
Yep. I have seen fan fic and hell even online porn stories (ones written mostly for people to masturbate to) that are better then most YA.
Yeah it's annoying because the author just doesn't want to write an actually normal developed relationship and instead has them connected through destiny
It's a shame. I've noticed that a lot of western authors embrace trends far too tightly because they focus on the outcomes of writing more than the writing itself. They want success, and they can get it by playing it safe.
It's particularly egregious in YA literature, because as we all know, young adulthood is the period of life when people hate change and trying new things...
@@renard6012 Is that so. When I was at that age, I had always tried my hands on different ideas every time I write. If I drop the novel at that time, then I would abandon the idea and never make something too similar ever again. I guess that's because I've read alot of books already? Or maybe I just had some sort of hate for things like replication?
Have you read lookwood & co? Its kinda the same but its done very well and not so much on the nose.
As an writer and aspiring author, I'm extremely sick and tired of *abuse-ship* and idolizing unhealthy habits in relationships. Books like 50 Shades, and books in that vein.
Amen! So frustrating to see that. Give me a well constructed romance that's healthy and functional for once! Please!
Yes please! Also I'm annoyed by generic love stories like girl meets mysterious guy and he's an ass but destiny connects them
@aleahcim Oh, definitely. 100%
@aleahcim hit the childhood trauma part to a T. Like god. There are so many “love stories” where the dude is abusive or gross. I was reading one and it was heavily implied that the main dude was an actual r*pist. I expected people to shun him and was happy he didn’t get a good ending, but most people were saying stuff like “awww he had a bad childhood his dad was a bad guy :((((((“ it was frustrating
Unpopular opinion. Add Nicholas Sparks to this list please.
Honestly for me, the reason I write is to put my true emotions on paper and to have characters who understand what I'm going through mentally. Writing is such a beautiful thing because it requires you to be vulnerable with yourself.
For the longest time, fantasy was a dirty word, and fantasy books were seen as childish and only for readers who weren't serious and the genre was seen as sub-par.
It's like comics. Today almost every single film or TV adaptation insists on calling them graphic novels, as if somehow that's classier and makes them a different entity from a comic book. Because comics are just the funny pages for slow readers.
We still see a bit of that embarrassment factor today in fantasy novels. The bookstores and supermarkets did 'adult' covers for Harry Potter and GoT novels, so people who didn't normally read fantasy wouldn't feel embarrassed to be seen reading them in public. I think some of this rubbed off on the writers, so they felt as if had to sneak the fantastic element of fantasy in through a side door.
Fuck that. My books have mages with loud, flashy magic, non-human races of my own creation and plenty of weirdness. From page 1 you know what you're getting. I'm not embarrassed about reading or writing fantasy and never have been.
Stephen Aryan Never understood the embarrassment either. A good story is a good story, humanity’s enjoyed a fun tale since the first languages were made. Doesn’t matter what the genre is or how old it is.
@@joshuapowell6822 very true. It's not something I read but I know a lot of people also look down on the romance genre and think it's trash. But if you like it, then you like it.
Good plug, how's the book coming along? It sounds interesting.
@@gyg_pa9381 it was published in 2015 by Orbit books. And then I did five more for them. So, yeah, pretty good.
Stephen Aryan how is the first book called? I'd like to check it out.
When it comes to fantasy races I've seen a trend, perhaps especially in D&D where all the different races are just human but short and grumpy or human but tall and graceful etc. There's no real drive to have these people be different from humans, sort of making them like a Fortnite skin...
I highly recommend the Keeper Of The Lost Cities series by Shannon Messenger. It has all of the different races, like elves, dwarves, trolls, all that stuff, and they look completely different from each other and have different societies and biologies instead of just reskins of the same thing, and it’s all actually story relevant instead of just being there for the sake of it.
Or [insert animal]folk.
@@itisi2042 KotLC is one of my favorite series and I will NEVER stop recommending it. I love the dynamics and cultures of all the different intelligent species and it’s just an overall amazing series. Although, it is made for a younger audience, I find anyone can enjoy it.
@@sharminnanabawa5437 just got the first four bookz
Even more so in D&D recently. The developers have made a concerted effort to file down the differences between species, rewriting raw to scrub distinguishing flavour, lore and mechanics from non-humans, essentially making them all reskins of humans.
The release of Monsters of the Multiverse exists solely to undo one of the integral elements of fantasy; the fantasy.
I’d like to see, when morally grey characters are there, for that to be actually purposeful instead of just a tool to allow those characters to have no drive. Being neutral in itself is a moral stance, it’s important to show the impact of that not only on their choices, but in comparison to those around them. Not even that they “need to change” and “be good” but show a dichotomy of morality that is actually interesting. Neutrality doesn’t mean no personality or drive.
Also what’s wrong with having a generally good protagonist?? Why is that dying out!?
Do you mean a MORALLY good character? Or do you mean a quality good (well-developed)?
You asked, "Also what’s wrong with having a generally good protagonist?? Why is that dying out!?"
If you mean morally good...
Being morally good is difficult. It's also often (apparently) considered cliche. Critics seem to think that REAL people CAN'T be morally good... therefore, they have to be "gray" in order to be realistic... and if they aren't "realistic", then they can't be "well-written". Also, of course, they MUST be "flawed"... which has become a cliche itself.
Besides, REAL heroes are just so... passe. (Yeah, that's sarcasm there.)
Look at Rian Johnson's "critically acclaimed masterpiece", The Last Jedi, and what he did to Luke...
Even our fictional heroes aren't safe from character assassination.
(BTW, I almost puked putting TLJ and "critically acclaimed masterpiece" in the same sentence.)
Yeah the antihero was tedious in the 60s and 70s, and we're revisiting it real hard. Good and functional arent seen as linked. forced moral or mental failings are seen as normative.
Modern media producer: Good people don't exist.
Mahatma Ghandi, Jesus of Betlehem and Abraham Lincoln would like to have word with you.
@@aramhalamech4204 Gandhi slept with/next to his teenage niece to prove his resistance and purity, Jesus is literally Christian mythology, Lincoln advocated for the separation of white and Poc people and said that mixed race marriage was wrong.
Noone is flawless. They all did good things, no shade, but they also were flawed.
@@cockycookie1 Yeah of course everyone is flawed but that doesn't mean that we have to be defined by our flaws or can't overcome them. a flawed character can still be a good person but for some reason most characters in fantasy literature are more defined by their failings and flaws making them all grimdark anti-heroes. It's becoming a trope at this point and it annoys me greatly.
After dipping into so many different fantasy series this year I’ve been saddened by the amount of medieval-ish humans being the basis to build out, or not, from. It’s made me respect Star Wars a whole lot more. Sure Star Wars wasn’t literature, but from a world building perspective it was so happy to throw in masses of interesting species of creature and different ways of life to explore.
I’m really struggling to find a good fantasy series that has the real high part of high fantasy, and not just earth in a different time period with some magic.
We 👏 need 👏 more 👏 Glorppo Shittos
I love Star Wars!
You mean stuff like WarCraft?
Read Mushoku Tensei Lmao
@@randomdistructionShould put a CW, because it's absolutely unhinged and kinda fucked up. It adds to the story tho of course, and all the characters adhering to a very "non-heroic" moral code is part of what makes it great, I love that the protag is a bit of a scumbag. But still, it's pretty grapey and stuff.
Tolkien children? Missed opportunity to call them Children of Hurin
Underrated comment
Well they were cursed ....
@@nennamori Exactly.
So two things.
1) I reeeeally wish you posted some text examples when referring to poor prose versus what you consider to be more "poetic", because while I think I know what you mean, I could just be flat wrong. You don't even have to source the text if you're worried about putting an author on the spot, just some blurb so I have a better idea of what you mean.
2) When you mention the idea of fantastical elements driving the plot, are you saying you want more stories where fantasy is the end rather than it being a means to an end?
This is basically what I came to say. More examples to back up the claims would be nice. Despite my agreeance on most points, I'd like to see contextual evidence.
Sounds like he just doesn't like the "slice of life" genre, where the fantasy world is just the backdrop.
I think what he's talking about are stories where the fantasy setting could be swapped out for another one without impacting the story. Often the best sci-fi/fantasy makes the setting integral to the plot, or has some interplay with the characters.
"Oh," he said, his cerulean orbs drifting downward due to gravity
I think the complaint boils down to "fantasy" drawing closer to "fiction". I think the First Law example is a good example for the fantastical elements complaint. Especially in the second trilogy so far, there is very little magic outside of Rikke's Long Eye. How much would change about the second First Law trilogy if it was set in England and Ireland instead of Midderland and Angland? In the first trilogy, the search for the Seed is a good example of a fantastical element driving the plot. The search for the Seed provides the need for the main characters to go off on their own away from their familiar civilizations and have the desired interactions and growth. Fantasy is not the end; it's the means to the end. I believe his complaint is that it's not even the means to an end in many modern "fantasy" stories.
5:40 hot take: I prefer most "human only" settings to settings that just rehash the classical fantasy race tropes. If you do different races, please do make them very different, not just "human+ with pointy ears" and "green and evil body builders". Also: a lot of settings with races have "good" and "evil" races, which I dislike in general. More moral ambiguity and a stronger focus on culture over race would be preferable imo.
Actually, one of the few things I really loved about the Eragon books by Christopher Paolini was that the orcs (I know, he doesn’t call them that, but that’s what they are!) start out being super one dimensional and evil, but then later that is revealed to only be Eragon‘s perspective and they become reluctant, but somewhat respected allies and are explored a bit further.
I'm working on a story with about three separate races, humans, space elves and dark space elves (my coauthor came up with them not me). A major point in the stories were writing is the conflict between humans and the space elves that eventually erupts into a kind of race war. I don't want to dive into tired old tropes like "These elves have enslaved our people for so long! Rise up my brother's and sisters!" Rather, I want their conflict to emerge out of more subtle issues. Like how the cultures and attitudes of the humans disgust these elves and the humans find the elves to be pretentious snobs. I have also attempted to heavily diversify various human groups as well as the space elves (though they are distinctly more homogeneous).
I also personally don't mind having distinctly good or evil races either though I can see why others might not care for such black and white lines. In the case of such settings though I think it would be important/interesting to see how the races interact both in personal instances as well as on a larger scale. Have grand battles where attributes of both races have distinct influence on how they wage war or how they deal in political affairs and all that stuff.
I feel like the "good" and "evil" races thing in fantasy fiction is a holdover from things like Tolkien and CS Lewis' work, which had *very* strong "these beings are always evil" lines, but that this is also a holdover from mythology. There's a lot of mythical creatures that are just *always* malicious by nature, particularly among the fae, yokai, and other such beings. Things like the Valravn, the Redcap, the Oni, are portrayed as universally malevolent, suggesting that this trope has just been a thing for perhaps as long as people were telling fantastical stories.
Also, of course, one can definitely lay some blame on Dungeons & Dragons. There's a whole lot of races (Drow, Orcs, etc.) who are always listed as being of Evil alignment, no exceptions...unless you're bleeping Drizzt Do'Urden.
@@Mokiefraggle There is some pretty good rational for that sort of thing though. There are plenty of "evil" things in the world. Or at the very least things that are always looking to hurt you if you get too close. Things like predatory animals can be labelled as evil. Sure you can excuse it by saying they don't know any better, but that doesn't change the fact that they instinctively attack and harm to a person is conflated with evil being done to them. And there are genuinely evil people in the world. These default evil races can be an allegory for such people but the important thing to realize is that these races don't really refer to specific ethnic or cultural groups in real society but anyone who could be considered genuinely evil.
We have plenty of examples of this in history. People like the Nazis and in more immediate life there are the bitchy Karens who seemingly just hate everyone. They might not be your traditional "evil" individual but they surely can't be considered good and it is this generally bitter and resentful attitude that is simply taken to it's logical extreme in evil fantasy races. They are people with unbridled hatred and bitterness within them willing and happy to hurt anyone around them simply for the sake of it.
I agree, there is no real point in having fantasy races if each of them is just humans with certain amplified characteristics or narrow cultural tropes, just stick to humans then, they allready have all that diversity. On the other hand, I'm intrigued by fantasy races that are in a meaningful way distinct from anything a human could be, but also follow an understandable inner logic. For classical elves that could mean leaning heavily into their endless lifespans and what it means for cultures and societies when all previous generations are present at all times and even how biology and evolution might work for a race that as a whole needs to adapt to changes but of which recent generations only make up a small demographic.
I agree that dragons are cool, but I want to see more original versions of dragons. More of How to train your dragon type things with dragons
Yes! I would lose it if I got more of that
I actually feel the exact opposite.
Nothing makes me retch more about fantasy as when the author is clearly try-harding to be unique.
@@seigeengine Doing more then the bare minimum lazy ass world building is not try-harding you unimaginative imbecile.
Update: I am getting more into translation now and are looking for native English speaking beta readers.
As a swedish published fantasy author I'm slowly but surely translating my book into english. I've obly got a few pages out of a 508 pages long novel so far, but it is fun. My book is a bit unique compared to English/American fantasy simply because of how Scandinavian it is. I also got a lot of inspiration from the Crusades and Asian mythology.
@Tage Ambrosiani Vinterkrig. Finns på Bokus. :)
Best of luck. Are you doing the translation yourself or getting it proffesionally done?
I know translation can be a real art because some ideas don't translate well or a million other things. Best of luck. Make sure to get proof readers.
@@zidaryn Thank you. I've only translated 4 pages, and those are pretty good, but it is as you say. I've recently befriended a translator actually, so I will see if I translate it myself or not. It really is a struggle as you say and even though Swedish and English are quite similar, I still have to replace some words, reword some sentences and essentially rewrite the book, although not really since it is the same story, characters, themes and scenes. If it is to be translated it will have to be a long term project, and there needs to be demand for the English translation, so maybe focusing on building up a brand, for example by building up a RUclips channel first, would be a better idea. Professional translations are really expensive though, and having recently been a student money isn't something I have in piles. ;)
@@marcusappelberg369 Yea. I believe it. Again, best of luck and I wish you all the best.
I'll subscribe to your channel to see what you have.
@@marcusappelberg369 I don't know how fluent you are in English, but I would highly recommend getting it professionally translated. I study French with focus on translation so I had a lot of classes on it. It takes knowledge of not only the language but also culture to translate anything. Fantasy is even harder due to noelogisms and hidden cultural perspective, there's also the question of how faithful to the original you wanna be. Even if you manage to translate it all to English will it sound natural? Will you convey the imagery (I'm not sure proper English word for this term of literary criticism) for English speakers to understand? Have you used stylisation? If yes, do you know how this type stylisation works in English? How about archaisms?
There's so much to every little detail even choosing British, American, Canadian or Australian version changes ways of conveying things.
Still hope you will succeed internationally.
*me a newbie writer aggressively taking notes on this entire video*
Me a potential writer who already made a world and story, but didn't start writing yet because of procrastination, same
@@anoNEMOs This has been me for at least five years now
@@sophiaredwood5825 I think I should read more books before writing.
If you are a new writer I have two channels that you should watch:
Hello Future Me. He does lots of advice in writing, like "designing a magic system" and etc. The vids are awesome.
Overly Sarcastic Productions. Check out the Trope Talks playlist first. Red goes over different tropes from fiction from Mary Sue's, to The Five Man Band, and more.
Once your done with the Trope Talk, hang around the channel for Mythology Sumerized or Blue's quick history vids. Great stuff. Lots for you there.
@@anoNEMOs me who already has a friggin fictional universe but is too lazy to think too much about y
I agree with the stance that fantastical motivations have seen a decline. I call it "The Death of the MacGuffin", and it really in large part due to this (mistaken) perception that a character's motivations, when tied to some nebulous or fantastical object are somehow lessened. "It's not realistic!" they cry. I counter by pointing out that Ponce de Leon (sp?) was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he stumbled across North America. Hundreds or even thousands of legit archeologists have spent their entire lives hunting the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tossing a 'Guffin in front of your characters and letting them chase it, it's actually a very relatable and human thing to do.
I really agree with this! I really like these over the top fantastical motivations as a writer myself, but the modern aversion to them makes it tricky. I (lovingly) copied off George Lucas by making the McGuffin a character that lacks the ability to move the plot along themselves. The reader is meant to actually care about this lovable character, and by extension, the McGuffin buried inside. It's almost not a McGuffin, as you trick the reader into caring about it!
Couldn't agree more. In a lot of situations the MacGuffin is tied to some world altering thingo and people claim that as lazy because you don't bother to explain how the thing does what. But I think that you can get away with this lack of clarity by wrapping whatever it is in adequate mystique. Have it be magical in nature and magic be something that is mysterious to most of the cast.
This isn't something so easily done in Sci-Fi and in Fantasy with hard magic systems. Everything has to be explained in those sorts of stories (unless you've made some equivalent to magic in you science fiction story).
A personal gripe of mine with modern audience cynicism is the idea that pure evil villains are bad. They say they aren't realistic or compelling. It's like, "Do you really not think there are people out there who kick puppies for fun?"
If you answered that question with a "No" then I know some videos that will change your answer. So I fundamentally disagree with the idea they are 'cartoonishly evil'.
The harder part is making them compelling/interesting. Depending on what kind of villain you write it might be impossible to make them interesting as a person. Evil Overlords are rather one dimensional as a general rule. But to make them more dynamic can detract from their menace. They are supposed to be ominous, imposing, cold and all encompassing. Making them sympathetic will ruin that overwhelming aura of power and fear they should instill in the reader. Psychopaths are a lot easier to make interesting as a character and if you have an ounce of imagination I doubt I need to explain why.
As for compelling though, I would argue that the one-dimensional overlords are as compelling as any other kind of villain. Typically they represent the greatest challenge for the hero to overcome. By definition they are compelling. It does help to add underlings to th is kind of villain to spice up his dynamic a bit and add variety to their scenes.
@@ThrottleKitty that is evil. Bravo...
@Railstar1976
The problem is when the MacGuffin becomes a vehicle to tell terrible stories about something is when it becomes very boring.
Most of the writing is also of the lowest level. Most fantasy writing is of the standard of James Patterson writing. It does not matter what genre you are in bad writing is hard to stomach.
@@bighands69 No individual trope is "bad writing" across the board, or not. That's just not how it works it all. It's a matter of how it's written, many of the best stories use McGuffins.
What I feel like, especially in the past couple of years, is that there has been such a major push for writing characters that must be grey to a fault. People worry more about the prospect of everyone being able to relate to the morally grey villains and heroes and anti-heroes, but in reality most people rarely relate to the same extremities within personality traits and motives. Instead, what is realistic, is that some people will be able to relate, and others will find it difficult. Very rarely do we see actions that are equally relatable to everyone - so when writers keep pushing for more and more "relatable" characters, what they end up doing is shaving off any edge and complexity that character may have had, in favor of creating these mellow clumps of personas that are attached to the characters in their stories. The broader reader segment a character is relatable to, the less individualistic they will come across, and oftentimes less noteworthy as a result.
Grey aspects in characters is great, because that's what breaks the stereotypes and makes us think deeper about motives and the potential for growth in unexpected directions - but an overabundance of grey personality loses the sense of the core character itself and you start moving away from a human personality, and shallowness takes over instead. Many writers today aren't as aware of this potential pitfall as they should be.
I don't like this trend away from really "good" heroes, either; one of my favorite philosophical writers thought a similar trend among churchgoers was a "mutual non-admiration society." People have become so allergic to aspiring to becoming anything other than lumps of human flesh with deep-seated needs and insoluble problems. Heroic characters, in fiction and real life alike, show us that we CAN do better than that.
Excellent points in this comment thread.
I would add, taking this as a jumping off point: this anti-hero "all characters including main characters must be grey" trend has also infected popular cinema as well, at least for the last decade. This includes retconning characters from the past who may have been more morally grounded and heroic, and making them more "grey."
A trend running alongside this is making villains more sympathetic to an extreme or to a fault. Perhaps the epitome of this is the (now overdone) trope of the redemption arc, with the villain turning good.
What I find troublesome about both trends is that it has the problematic result in which truly heinous or evil crimes or actions -- such as murder, or murder on a large scale -- being relatively easily forgiven and forgotten. "Heroes" who are ostensibly admirable commit bad deeds, but are forgiven like it's no big deal. Villsins are redeemed and even join the "good guys" or become admirable characters through perhaps one simple act, as if all their history of morally horrific previous actions didn't exist, not troubling them or those about them, and we as the audience are also to forgive and forget so very easily. Even worse is when there is no real making of amends, or of restorative justice. tdrl: there is too much tolerance for doing the wrong thing, and forgiveness is unearned.
There are plenty of exceptions to this; but that can often prove the rule, and besides I'm noting large trends.
I wish what I said was not the case, so if I'm off-base with these ideas, please prove me wrong!
I blame social media.
Specifically, the terminally online types who reflexively reject anything that might look like judgment, morality, or basic human decency, loudly voicing their opinions and being the only ones in the room, thus making it seem like they're not a tiny fraction of the general population.
I love grey characters, but I hate how EVERYTHING has to be grey or Grimdark now. Where did the heroes go, now the narrative is either nobody is good or only the MC who is 'good' aka super preachy stand on a soapbox sanctimoniously shoving their opinions down the readers throat as a way for the author to virtue signal, Its annoying. I miss heroes who were heroes for the sake of being heroic. What happened to villains and monters, I miss monsters being monstrous not sympathetic. I miss villains do villainous things because they are just bad people. I don't want characters to be 2 dimensional, but what we are getting is 2 dimensional just in the other direction.
I swear if I read one more fic where "The MC's life is suffering" I'm gonna lose it. Grimdark and misery porn has become more common than anime girls wearing sailor schoolgirl uniforms. I feel bad for these authors and the redditors that simp for them, because they are terminally online, believe toxic nonsense, and it shows.
"Where everything in the story is being motivated by fantasy."
This is one of my favourite aspects about the fantasy genre. You've got magic! Use it! With the fantasy series I'm writing the fantasy elements of the world ARE the main plots because, to me, thats why you write fantasy.
@Wyncrer I don't know, sometimes I like a novel purely for the escapism of travelling to another world. Sometimes though I kind of feel that authors can tunnel in on worldbuilding and magic systems in particular to the detriment of the story as a whole.
Not always of course, all books are different and there's plenty of room for different types of story. But I think you can be trying to do too much, too many things. There can be too much of a goodthing sometimes, what do you think?
Martin and Abercrombie are the two main exceptions to this "rule".
Somehow, you still get such a fantasy feeling, yet the magic is just. .kind of there, natural to the world, so much it kind of goes unnoticed.
I love that too, when well done. It's pretty realistic, somehow.
@@XakoWako , if you build your entire book on magic systems, or detailed world building, very often indeed the plot suffers.
Most people in these other world's do not possess magic. The world is often not driven by it, but by mundane concerns.
If you don't address those, you inavitably miss something.
I find that it takes a real skilled writer to create a world with prevalent magic that doesn’t end up being overpowered and create plotholes.
Jonas Ohlsson Harry Potter doesn’t do that
Your point about less fantasy focus within fantasy reminded me of one of my complaints about the Star Wars sequels; because they never use the force while fighting each other, force user fights became just sword fights instead of Space Magi duels.
The new Star Wars movies are trash that were more interested in pushing politics than anything else.
Let’s be honest, if you damn the sequels you can damn almost every other piece of Star Wars media for that.
@@briarrosegael2015 Ah yes. The deep political message "I don't like sand, it's coarse, rough and it gets everywhere"
Enuma Elish Wait? Can I ask for clarification? The point of my comment was to say that the sequels weren’t the only ones that had people sword fighting instead of using the force. Let’s not forget the weak fight of, “only a master of evil darth.” Or if we were talking about the ‘political’ aspects of the sequels(the fault of Disney wanting to pay lip service to social causes just for a money, but never actually doing anything substantial.). The prequels were literally about how the republic(liberal democracy) fell because of an opportunistic individual drumming up a support base from those who were tired of war. (One that he orchestrated.) The separatists were expounded in the clone wars as having qualms with how those with economic interests subverted democracy. In the end, both were played and the republic never meaningfully challenge the growing power of Palpatine. See, “So this is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause.” I won’t defend the vapid nature of the sequels(made so definitely by ROTS). My comment was remarking on how all the Star Wars movies fail to demonstrate the “Space Magi” that OP lamented that he disliked their exclusion from the sequels. The OT and the PT did the same in many ways. That was my point. Not the ‘politics’ of the sequels.
They also kinda barely use the force in the OT
Tolkien overused the word "pale" to an insane degree, and once you see it, it can't be unseen. It's my only complaint with his style.
Your complaint is what is "pale" .....
hehehe
Pale? Pale?! PAAAAEEL! Yeah but seriously you're absolutely right.
All of his other flaws as a writer pale in comparison.
A lot of classical authors did, not just in the fantasy genre. Eventually, you start to think of all the characters as covered in chalk dust.
@Pennuang Domduangden Boiled leather describes something common in the setting. It's like complaining if they say "sword" too much. Pale could just be changed to other adjetives.
Its always strange to me that people have to defend quality, because it looks like its a race to the bottom in terms of writing at the moment. Even in the pulp era, where pulp writers could knock out a novel in a couple of days, not all writers were created equal. Talent counts. And btw, well written does NOT mean flowery writing. Just sayin´.
Exactly. The current quality of lots of fantasy is appalling right now. Quality does not equal flowery. In fact flowery can be bad if done badly too. The idea that he feels the need to defend this opinion just goes to show how bad the writing quality has got.
If someone takes that personally then maybe they shouldn't be writing - or need a lot more practice and need to improve the quality of what they read.
I don't read much, but when i do, once the writing starts talking more than necessary i close the book.
So, basically, the fantasy genre lives in the shadow of Tolkien's work. Shadow which they cannot escape from...
"Go back to the shadows from whence you came!"
yeah, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. EVERYTHING technically lives in Gutenberg's shadow but that's not stopping us from remixing and enjoying new creations!
Eh, the mystery genre has yet to shed the shadow of Arthur Conan Doyle but no ones ever complained about it.
I think we are way too critical of fantasy sometimes when other speculative fiction has the same, if not worse, tropes that fantasy also has.
@Dugon man how about Wilkie Collins? The moonstone and the woman in white?
@@aylix2137 Wilkie is the Dunsany to Doyles Tolkien. He might have been a progenerator but hes not the material all inspiring wordsmiths aspire to.
Fantasy readers be complaining about tropes
Me a WuxiaNovel binge reader: *FIRST TIME?*
I've been getting into wuxia/xianxia in the past several months, and all I can say is JUNIOR, YOU DARE?!--I mean, I agree ;)
Criticizing Wuxia's you say, YOU'RE COURTING DEATH!
👁👁第一子？
👄
@@nadhifbhagawantahadiprayit975 But it's all Talentless Trash!
Trash/are you courting death/how dare you defend yourself
Thank you for all the videos, you're keeping me very entertained during lockdown! 😊
My brother is writing a fantasy book set in 1960's America with magical artifacts based off of American foklore. The story is going to be focused on taking down the baddies who are using the magical artifacts and a magical substance to achieve their goals. He also has a few new fantasy races and creatures (some designed by me), and I think a couple are quite unique.
Would love to read this
@@stefanlangenberg2439 He's working hard to make it perfect (I'm editing it) so he's only on chapter 9 right now. I'll try to remember to come back here if it gets published
Leaving a comment for future updates 👀
Best of luck to your brother and you ! His story sounds super cool !
Would love to hear more of this
I wish you both the best of luck, it sounds cool so far :D
As both a writer and an editor, I do agree.
An author should try to write well, and an editor should work to get them there.
that last point, chef's kiss. in a genre like fantasy, where you can make every plot-related element more interesting that the real world, it's such a missed oportunity
This is making me feel good about making characters whose fantastical abilities basically drive the entire plot. I was feeling self conscious like, is that too one-dimensional? They have full fledged character arcs involving drastic emotional change, but it kind of made me feel like they were somehow less believable because the magic is kind of all-consuming at times. I mean, wouldn't anyone become a little consumed if they wielded extremely dangerous magic?
Clara Bryant Power does corrupt people. Maybe consider fitting that in if it won’t derail the story, or maybe how the characters feel about what they do with this magic. Would they be terrified about how they could kill with magic or destroy buildings with it? I’d certainly be terrified if I could just conjure fire in my hand or freeze something solid.
@@joshuapowell6822 Haha I'm way ahead of you. It's about a girl who can travel through dreams and she uses the power wrongly, causing someone to get hurt, feels remorseful, and then changes her boundaries with the magic.
@@aboycalledfish Woah that's so cool. I don't think that's one dimensional fantasy wise, I mean, it's fantasy, so if it's in tandem with the characters then it's sure to be a driving point to the plot
If you want to improve your writing start with lots of short stories. And get them reviewed it may change your outlook on writing.
This sounds so cool!!
There is so much great Fantasy and Science Fiction from the last 60 years...You don't need to worry about modern trends. I was a fantasy super fan until I went to college and grad school. I am reading fantasy again and I just picked up where I left off. I just finished the first two books of the "New Sun Trilogy" by Gene Wolfe and I am starting Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné series.
You really can't go wrong with Moorcock. Elric is great, though I always had a bit of a weakness for the Hawkmoon series....
"So many Dragon titles."
Or more precisely, Dragon Rider school stories, especially ones where some vagabond imprints on a super-powerful dragon that was supposed to go to some noble.
@@Kaylakaze dragonriders of Pern and How to Train Your Dragon ripoffs
I'm just so tired of dragons being beasts to be tamed or slain. At least Smaug was intelligent.
I read this as "So many Dragon titties." and I'm both confused and disappointed
@@HoloTheDrunk It could still be that.
I have to say, I've read some amazingly written fanfics. On par or better than many original books.
Plus they're free.
Can u name some?
But a lot, if not most, are drek, either in world building or klunky writing or word choices/vocabulary or....
So have I! Fanfic can be extremely well written. Also, it often allows for types of stories that you almost never see in published novels. If you want 50k words of just fluff and humor with little to no plot, you got it! If you want a story so dark that it would never find traction outside of fanfic, it's just a few clicks away! Hell, if you want characters from two entirely separate universes interacting, that's on aisle three.
Yeah, there's a lot of self-indulgent stories and smut, but what's wrong with that? Especially since (and no offense to published novels) the smut in fanfic is on average much higher quality, especially on AO3. And much stranger, if you're into that sort of thing. The point is that fanfic has basically become an entirely new medium for stories. I can't really think of anywhere else that allows for the level of creativity, interactivity, and freedom that's found there. Of course, this is all just my opinion, but as someone who has read millions of words of both traditional works and fanfiction, and written a significantly smaller amount of both, I think I have a fairly good basis on which to make this claim.
If you are interested in good Star Wars fics find the author malicean, for samurai stuff and Stargate and such find the author vathara.
Hey Danial it would be nice when you're talking about prose and writing style to give us an example, for us that english isn't the first language.
Hmm like average writing style would be: “He watched her walk away, slamming the door as she left.” More sophistication: “Her steps were purposeful and rigid. The stomps of her feet thumping their way through his brain. His eyes were glued to her back, willing her to turn around. She did not. His gaze remained locked on the closed wooden door. He knew it would never open to her again.” And in this second example you can see the prose, it tells a mini story through description where as the first is more simple, straight to the point, less emotional.
Basically he is saying that the writing should be more poetic, but in a purposeful and competant way.
Prose is, to seriously simplify a complex idea, the poetic quality of writing that tends to separate it from speech.
Prose can also be really cringe if is done poorly or overdone, so it is a bit of a balancing act.
As a Lit Major myself, I totally get what you mean in this. I can make allowances, but there’s a certain expectation of ‘professional’ writing as opposed to casual personal ‘fanfic’ writing. That being said, there are some Fanfic writers who are clearly building their craft for the professional world, and they’re gems!
I'm an amateur writer and I just wanted to say I agree with all of your points. I read a lot more than I write and I've also noticed how the prose of fantasy writers can be irregular. The most recent example was a vampire fantasy story I read and the author kept referring to female characters by their hair color instead of their names; 'The blonde did this.' 'The brunette did that." and so on. The story itself was great, I finished reading the book in three days, but seeing that 'writing quirk' made me wince.
I started writing my own fantasy story a few months ago and I love the process of world building and creating the history and culture for the races I've included in it. Of course, I'm drawing a hefty bit of inspiration from Tolkien, Martin and Herbert, but I'm hoping my novels won't be considered too cliche or derivative.
I cannot stomach most of the modern fantasy stories. Martin is a good writer but nothing special as a writer but he is not a fantasy writer.
Martin shows how poor the genre is by being a good writer with an amazing imagination can produce great fantasy.
You've hit right on something I find an incredibly awkward tool of the amateur writer. The tendency to want to avoid using a person's name too often, often cited as feeling awkward, and thus to refer to them by some feature instead. The "hair color" thing, the race thing (calling a character "the elf," or whatever), or "class" (Rogue, Barbarian, Paladin...like it's D&D), when that's even less realistic than just going with "Bob said this". You don't refer to your friends by their hair color, even in your own head!
Hey, know this is a while ago, but the fact that you notice that stuff is a good sign your writing will be pretty solid!
@@Mokiefraggle Speaking of awkward tool of amateur writers, I remember a serie(where I barely got throught book 1) where the author, besides many other shit, loved adjective way too much. One passage that I still think about is one time where she decided to randomly describe the main character's eye in details in the middle of the story. It's in french, but it could be translated by something like this: her eyes were big, bright, blue...and this is where she used a word I didn't know. After some research, it turns out that this word meant a blue-green color. Which is obviously a bit repetitive considering that you've already said that the eyes are blue. Was really strange.
Awaiting Victorian Gothic Fantasy. With man vs nature themes.
Have you read Walden?
@@bobok5566 nope, do give details
Uhm... it HAS been done, you know
Rotherweird, while not set in the victorian era, is set around a village subtly idealistically trapped in victorian standards and has a good Man Vs. Nature aspect, and gothic in its presentation of the town itself with spires and weird characters and all that goodness. Not 100% what you’re looking for, but I hope that helps a little bit!
better yet: a fantasy setting with Elves, Orcs, etc...
But the Time-Frame is the industrialization.
In general, I just miss really enchanting high fantasy
Same here! It's nearly impossible to find.
I'm working on something like that. Years in progress though.
How do you mean?
I love how Daniel refers to Anti-Fantasy as if it’s a angst phase.
I've already recommended this to you, but the John Cleaver series by Dan Wells (Brandon Sanderson's college best friend) is a real world dark fantasy series that makes up its own fantasy race called The Withered. It starts out as horror in book 1 and 2 and turns into dark fantasy in book 3 onwards, and you don't really learn about who The Withered are or how they work until the second trilogy in the 6 book series, but I gotta tell you, this series blew my mind.
I will say it is YA. However, it has the perfect blend of poetic prose and regular prose, a fascinating protagonist that rivals the complexity of your most complex adult fantasy characters, no love triangles (there's one sort of implied, but it doesn't happen onscreen), and a truly epic journey that starts incredibly small and self-contained in book 1. I highly highly recommend it to you. Book 1 has some debut novel problems, but other than that the series is perfect, and it's my favorite fantasy series of all time, even more than Stormlight. Each book is only about 300 pages long.
The series also manages to have two excellent villains, Bill Crowley and Nobody, which is pretty rare. Even if a series is lucky enough to have a good villain, it's typically the one villain, and hardly ever the main villain
There is also a movie of the first book, it's ok, could have been scarier.
Love this series! Glad to see others like it too.
Is the story called John cleaver or does it have another name
@@user-mu8ok5xf8d The first book is called "
I Am Not a Serial Killer"
I am a non-native English writer. Even though I am somewhat fluent in English (atleast I think so), I can't really make the words flow and accurately define emotions of the character. I lack the native connect to the readers. Nevertheless, I am confident that I can flesh out the characters well and drive the plot in the right way, I suck at making conversations within characters (small talks, pun....). And Deep down I have always felt some sort of an inferiority complex. Neep help..
I have conversations with mine out loud as any of the characters involved. Even talking about something mundane that's not related to the story. I picked it up from doing script writing. Which has really helped me improve on my characters conversations. I hope that helps.
I know that too well, I started reading more in English and watch shows where they talk a lot
@@Al-nj8ow Internet gave you cooperation and you are still trying to go alone. Find some native speaker and ask how this can sound better.
Vyacheslav Avsjanik true, a bad thing i noticed though is that especially Americans make a lot of grammar mistakes themselves, like they're/their... I guess I should search on a platform for this specifically
@@Al-nj8ow HEY EVERYONE THIS GUY NEEDS HELP.
Honestly, as a teen in high school, YA was my favorite, and it was the best thing in the world, basically. but now, In my early 20s, I cannot stand it. There are very few that I can pick up and read through, is is just horrible.
its because you were the target age group then and you aren't now lol
@@dibigmitch also young adults now are very different from young adults 15 or even 10 years ago
Haha same I thought it was the best now it’s grating and they all blur together lol
I'm glad you grow up!
I don't think it's fair to consider just age groups as the driving factor behind demographic trends. I'm in the YA target age group, but none of my male friends read that genre purely because 90% of it is targeted at women (who are also the largest consumers of fiction and romance specifically).
I will never understand using "fanfic" as an insult. Sure, there are a lot of very amateur, fan-made stories out there you can't help but cringe while reading, but many fanfic authors are often better writers than "published" authors.
nah fr i read some of the fnaf books, specifically faz frights and tales from the pizzaplex and jfc everyday i just beg for someone from ao3 to write just one of the stories bc damn why did i pay 15 dollars to have the line "youre not like other girls... youre weird... different..." in there 😭😭😭
also so many rangas bro every story gotta have some red haired mf
Most fanfics you find out there are still pretty poorly composed, though. “Professional” writing has deteriorated to the point where it is much easier for fans to outshine “published” authors, but even with the lower bar, you still need to dig through a lot of chaff to find the gold.
@@JustAnArrogantAlien I think I just have a skewed opinion as the fanfics I have read are ones that stick and I drop the ones that are poor. Bc the GOOD fanfics can do some AMAZING things. I have cried so much via fanfics' stories it's crazy
If you’ve read a good amount of fanfic, then you’d understand it a bit more.
Something I have noticed is that children's fantasy has been way more creative and interesting in terms of the fantasy genre (from what I have read anyways). From what I could tell there is more of a focus on non-human characters like dragons, animals, and other fantasy races. Some series that come to mind from my teenage years being Guardians of Ga'Hoole and Wings of Fire. While some may lack the detailed prose of adult novels, I often find myself more interested in stories they tell. Not going to lie, most YA novels are very long-winded, boring or just too similar to another for me. So even though I am 22 now, i still find myself heading back to the pre-teen section of bookstores to see what is on the shelves.
On a side note, I feel like people do not realize how awesome non-human POVs are in fiction. They can offer up so many new perspectives and interactions! I have noticed a trend of "non-human" characters that are just humans with height differences or altered body features. I don't like it.
(Also, a minor nitpick for me: YA novels often have lettering that is way too small and my eyes love to mix and switch letters if I don't focus on them. It's just too exhausting to read!)
11:35 It's what I've called in a few conferences I've given on he subject the "PTSD" of modern fantasy: "Poop, treason, sex and disemboweling", which used to be staples of "dark fantasy" are now well ingrained in current trends. Because of course we need extensive descriptions of how some poor guy's bowels empty and the content rolls down their thighs as they're strung up and gutted while their significant other is being graphically violated or something, all due to the scheming of some coward who will be similarly murdered during a graphic sex scene (complete with "nipples" being used approximately 50 times per page), and so on and so forth. That is fantasy now, my friends, good luck finding magic and adventure when people want "guts, tits and politics", as someone in the audience of one of my conferences put it.
"Nipples used 50 times on a single page"
Well how else were they describe the leviathan feeding its young?
When I got to be adult and found that I still preferred YA books to anything I found in the adult Fantasy section, I started to wonder about the distinction. And I realized that YA books can't rely on the crutch of sex, swearing, or extreme violence/gore, so they have to actually tell an interesting story with interesting characters.
Having by now migrated to an intake of almost exclusively fanfiction, I don't think it's quite that simple, and Hurt/Comfort is a prevalent genre for a reason. But I still shy from the grosser side of things. (And from fantasy politics, for that matter.) Though my favorite adult fantasy trilogy is The Deed of Paksenarrion, which has an *extensive* and *graphic* torture section... that the text absolutely earns and justifies. It's brutal but it's not gratuitous, and later plot points hinge on the fact that it happened.
So even gore can have its place. But it's like swearing: A little goes a long way, and if your characters swear all the time, the points where you *really* need to punch up the dialog are just left flat by contrast. (The one place I noted abundant swearing to have a purpose was in Gran Torino, where it's used to establish the characterization of three separate groups by *how* they swear. I found that interesting.)
By the by, it might be instructive to compare modern fantasy trends with the trends in fanfiction, e.g. from this survey:
www.fansplaining.com/articles/five-tropes-fanfic-readers-love-and-one-they-hate
Controversial Opninion: Sci-Fi tends to have more interesting, complex cultures than Fantasy.
Agreed. It's a cultural thing: Fantasy is culturally rooted in tradition, existing romantic themes of mythology and such. Magic is fundamentally running on what feels right based on the cultural cues you picked up during your life. Same for fantasy races. How many non-humanoid fantasy races are there?
In contrast in SF authors compete to come up with mindblowing new stuff that noone thought about yet. (Generalizing enormously of course. There are also some sub genres born out of SF that have fallen into some lazy trope patterns like Mil-SF, some Space Opera or Steampunk)
Fantasy is normally inspired by the Middle Ages, so of course it would be limited as many people see fantasy settings rooted in the past. But with sci fi, that could go anywhere. Near-modern earth, future earth, different earth, different planets, ships, space stations, and so much more. We don’t know what the future will be like and we barely know what’s out there in the rest of the universe so there aren’t as many barriers.
This is a really interesting take and I'd love to see Daniel tackle it in one of his debate videos. I think a lot of it is just the current general mystique around extraterrestrial life, so people are a lot more willing to try new, weird things (and publishers are more willing to put them out there.) Fantasy races are a lot more well established, and readers have more preconceived notions of what 'elf' or 'dwarf' culture might be like, vs a race of fish-dragon-cricket creatures from a galaxy away.
@@dancingintherain111 Well, in the context of a given book both are equally made up. And it's not like SF writers never crib each others ideas, there's a staggering number of Klingon knock-offs for instance. But the culture of SF authors seems more about exploring new concepts whereas in Fantasy it seems more about telling stories within a certain toolbox of fantastic tropes.
For those who actually compare the two, your opinion isn’t controversial. At the same time, it makes it a lot easier for sci-fi writers to get wrapped up in their world-building. Fantasy readers can be more forgiving if things are left out in the world as long as they accept the world’s logic. Sci-fi readers generally have a higher standard since more specific elements are needed to understand the culture, but there’s not a general rule for how much or litte information they want/need.
Time wasn't mentioned here, but it stands out a lot when there's a disconnect between page space and diagetic time passage.
Like, if something takes a character two seconds to do, don't put a four-page explanation of lore and backstory between them starting and completing the action. If they're on an uneventful lull activity, maybe that's where you drop in those bigger explanations. Let real-world time jibe (to some extent) with in-story time.
It's just so strange how many authors put action on pause and break up their own pacing because they're so eager to explain more stuff about their fantasy setting.
This is a good point I never see brought up, glad to see someone else noting it and finding it irritating
Imo one of the most important parts of fantasy. People get so excited to tell the secrets of their world they forget to leave some of them secret.
As someone who wrote a million word book that was absolute trash, trust me, you just have to let some of it go. A lot of it, in fact
For some reason, when writing action in the first-person, I like to do it the "RDJ Sherlock" style.
E.g., short, minimal phrases mostly consisting of adjectives and verbs.
@@anhilliator1 Raven, what are you doing here?
At the same time on the other side of that coin, I'm getting sick of Mc's pulling game changing events and abilities out of their magic a.. hat. Magic hat.
One thing you need to keep in mind is, several of these self published authors are not even native english speakers. They are publishing in english because the English/US market is larger than all other languages combined.
These people might know how to speak english properly, but it is hard to make a book very well written for these people on the first try.
That's true. I'm currently writing a romance novel in German, yet I plan to publish it in English, also. The problem is that I can speak the language fluently, yet when I have to translate something I intricately crafted in my mother tongue to reflect a certain emotion or thought, I just have no idea how that will really sound in English to a native speaker. I don't know all the words or styles of speach necessary for that. Yet I can't hire a translator or I'm literally broke.
So what I need to do is go to the DeepL AI, let it translate my entire book once it's finished, go back in sentence for sentence and correct all the mistakes the AI made and all the specific words I want to use, the way they speak, etc. and then get a native speaker to read it and correct it for literally everything else just because they're nice and wanna help a new author out. And even then I have no guarantee that it will actually sound decent.
To me? Sure. To a native speaker? For them it might still sound like a highschooler wrote it.
@@midnight8341 Almsot the same for me. My native language is Pertuguese. I am trying to write it directly in english although. What I do is, I think on the sentence and try to search in a pool of sentences that I have from a specific modern author of the same genre, and I try to is there is one or more than convey the same emotional form so I can adjust my sentence. It is a very slow method, but I hope it will make me able to start to do it directly in the near future.
@@tiagodagostini I tried that, too, yes. But I found that for me it feels too much like I'm trying to piece together a new story from the works of other artists and not my own.
I can only recommend DeepL, as it is an extraordinary translator AI,worlds better than GoogleTranslate. It can also capture sayings, metaphors and idioms, although not everytime. And it is able to translate to Portuguese, too.
You might wanna give it a try, even if it is only for a sentence or two, that you know exactly how you want it to sound in your language and look at all the different ways it could be expressed in English. It has also a real-time editing function, where you can click on a word you want to change, choose a new bit from a selection of suggestions and it will re-translate the sentence from the point you changed to adapt the grammar and wording to what you selected.
@@midnight8341 If you ever want a test reader, hit me up and I can help :)
Spanish writer here! I tried writing in English and then translating to Spanish, but I feel I have two voices, and they tell the story in different ways. Emotions and figures of speech are particularly hard to translate. I'm fluent in English but far more eloquent in Spanish. So I thought, I'm wasting too much time thinking about these details, when I should be finishing my story.
I hope fantasy evolves into creating unique races with unique cultures once again while using many of the trends in modern fantasy. It is one of the aspects of high fantasy i miss most. I think modern fantasy really has the ability to do something unique when developing new fantasy races. Mistborn for example did such a unique job with linking its magic system with the development of a race. Every revelation about the races present in Sanderson book hooked me deeper and deeper in.
zshoro I’d love to see some interesting twists on more traditional fantasy races too. The Elder Scrolls rather surprisingly makes some interesting twists, like with the crafting-obsessed Orcs or the Dunmer slaver magicians.
@@joshuapowell6822 Yeah. The fantasy worlds aspects and vast races left the novel scape, and went straight to the gaming genre, like Elder Scrolls. There is a reason those games are so well loved. I enjoy them, because it explores the god scape and their impact in the world in the past, and when those aspects show up again.
Like with how the Oblivion Event affected the world as the game went forward, and how Mehrunes Dagon affected the world in the past. It is even the same with Skyrim. The cool thing is, the 6th game will show us how Alduin affected the world.
Singers have entered the chat
Tolkien elves are quite different the stereotypical elves that is seen in media. Dark elves exist in his works but rather than being evil counterpart of the good elves they are just elves who didn't go to Aman and didn't see the light of the two trees. His elves also eat meat and never were tree hugging vegetarians and only used the woods as hideout, Heck his elves are also obsessed with crafting and smiting (something that is always seen on dwarves).
Congrats Daniel, you got a shoutout on Brandon Sanderson's newsletter! Great job, you definitely deserve it!
Where can I find the newsletter?
@@trevorfultz On his website: www.brandonsanderson.com/
Just go down and you can sign up to his newsletter at the very bottom of the site.
@@po067typokijtygfdr7 That'll just mean we get the next newsletter going out, which won't really help us read what Brandon said about Daniel in his latest newsletter
No you will get the current newsletter also
One of my problems with Sanderson, and I am a fan, is having to learn a new lexicon for every setting, and have to reread or relisten to sections until I understand the full context. One of the biggest drawbacks is that this results in a lot of exposition dumps in conversation or inner monologue that don't make sense in world because the characters understand these concepts, they're just explaining for the readers. Furthermore it means it results in less fleshed out character backgrounds. Like none of the characters in Stormlight except for the Herdazians seem to have extended families, aside from related central characters. Like we don't even know what house Nevani is from.
I had a problem with these exposition dumps in especially The Rhythm of War. In prologue, in fact. It felt almost at the level of "Previously on Stormlight Archive...".
The best example was "Aesudan, Navani's daughter-in-law, Elhokar's wife" in Navani's own head. It really took me out of the story.
It reminds me of this one XKCD strip, where the probability of a book being good is inversely proportional to the amount of made-up words that it has.
@@Parvapinna I think that metric should also factor in whether those words are from a conlang created for the setting and actually make sense, because otherwise it would class things like lord of the rings as the worst fantasy ever what with its' multiple fully fleshed out languages
In that xkcd comic, he specifically excludes Tolkien knowing his particular schtick is that he is a storyteller relating a grand epic which was once in another language and thus needs to basically make up a world whole-cloth with brand new terminology for everything, such as languages and therefore fantasy terms.
I completely agree about your first point, though I feel that using the term "fanfic writing" as a marker of bad writing does a terrible disservice to many fanfics that have way better writing than many contemporary highbrow litfic books I've read. Conversely, many good writers started as fanfic writers, which is absolutely fine. I know the point you were trying to make! Just pointing out that maybe "fanfic writing" does not equate to "bad writing" necessarily.
Exactly! Anyone who acts like fanfic is inherently bad has never read really good fanfic. And it's not like it's hard to find, either.
Ya but most fan fictions are not good writing, it’s just a broad generalization
@@BJGvideos it’s hard af to find. None of it is life changing and fanfiction, if based on someone else’s story, is almost never good. If someone has potential they should write an original story or something not some draco malfoy x reader or whatever y’all call amazing writing
@@user-pg1iw5je7p Some of the great works of literature are fanfiction. Shakespeare wrote regular and real person fiction, for instance. You think he came up with Romeo and Juliet? Heck no, he just popularized figures that were already around (and were probably based on the earlier story of Tristan and Isolde anyway). Earlier tellings even had a happy ending, so his could even fall under the trope of "deconstruction".
What makes writing about someone else's characters different now than when he did it? What makes the quality inherently lower to you?
@@user-pg1iw5je7p by this merit, dantes Inferno should never have been written, because it is a self insert fanfic of the bible
My main complaint with modern fantasy (and fantasy in general) is that the landscape of themes it touches on is still quite diminished, comparing it with science-fiction, historical drama, etc. When will we see a version of Anna Karenina with myths and magic? Something that truly transcends the trappings of fantasy, like Myazaki did with his cinema. I want to see a modern Don Quixote, a modern Journey to the West, modern fantastic tales that grow beyond the fantasy that has become codified since Tolkien. And yes, plenty of the tropes that Tokien codified are still representative of fantasy nowadays: Tribes coming together to fight big evil, subtle criticism of military conflict and industrialism, magic and magical beings going away, etc.
Neil Gaiman is one author who consistently uses fantasy to explore themes beyond those usually seen in the genre
You might like gene wolfe!
@@michaellayard5045 Wolfe was someone standing with at least one leg firmly in the SF world. Kind of illustrates the problem. Fantasy, High Fantasy in particular was for a very long time bound far more closely to existing themes and mythology (Tolkien clones or ancient myths retold) than SF which incentiviced authors for decades to boldly go where no reader had gone before.
@@doppelrutsch9540 while wolfe is certainly in the sci fi tradition for much of his work, book of the new sun really feels more like fantasy to me and fulfils many of the criteria of the original comment with combining magical elements and mythology in a tale that transcends fantasy
I completely agree! I do love the idea of Fantasy, but I need my books to have thoughtful prose and explore deep themes. I have not yet found that (I'm half-way through The Two Towers, but I'm not attached to any character yet, they seem all so black or white and many elements in the story annoy me, aka Tom Bombadil, the talking trees, the nonstop lyrical songs... But the writing style is indeed beautiful). I'll look up Wolfe, but what other author would you recommend? I don't necessarily need High Fantasy, I need true depth and complexity to the characters and to the plot.
One thing I miss is classic good vs evil. It feels like everything now has to be morrally gray or "the bad guy was actually a good guy."
I think most people dont enjoy reading this stuff because it has a very strong taste of black and white thinking. Exploring the possibility that a good character can and maybe already did bad stuff or a bad character did good things ergo maybe they arent classiclly bad and good makes not only the character but also the story and the world in a book more flesh out.
Personally I think its just to simple and bland to say „these people bad, these good“. It feels like a cheap excuse to not explore the theme of „you are either bad or good or are you ?“. Of course people will find deeper stuff like grey characters more appealing and interesting because it represents our real life. Most of us arent just good or bad, black and white (its more of a „the system and the people behind it are bad“).
But of course thats just only what I absorbed over time and manifested as my opinion.
@@missroundeye7854 i do agree, but I think we should have a good balance of both, so that one dosnt get bland. And i actually do like nuanced characters quite a bit.
@@ultimateblade3767 Understandable, have a nice day !
I think the problem is that everyone’s heard that nuanced villains are better than flat ones. Of course a well made deep villain is gonna be more morally interesting than Skeletor, but the emphasis is on “well made.” Some authors seem to think that making a nuanced villain goes as far as “They aren’t 100% evil.” And if your villain is just a simple character who is just as morally grey as the protagonist, everything feels the same. Sometimes you gotta write up a crazy evil skeletor villain because then they can more potently drive the plot, rather asking the plot to orbit them while the author circle jerks about how “deep” and “relatable” and “nuanced” they are.
Evil characters could be stand in for systems , that are otherwise hard to portrait, and used as social commentary. Sure some character and personality, but classic bad badies are really good for that.
And you can show nuance in others characters and how they get in morally grey areas, or how they struggle there to maintain , or fail so, being the good guy there, and how it haunts them.
Like lord of the rings actually had nuance, in the corruption of the ring and how power challenges in everyone their darker impulses. Good guys can be great if they struggle being so , despite everything,
I think when people invent new races they usually just reskin an already existing idea but because of that forget to add personality to it or even their importance.
Instead of inventing new ones, reinvent the current ones, their history, dive deeper into their culture and show things that many do not know.
Elves, Dwarves, orcs, etc, are just not explored as much as they should be. they are usually human stories with fancy side characters. there are exceptions, which I love.
for me to make these races seem *real* is to use real life inspiration, mix it with the culture you make and *naturally* adopt it and tell it in a way that's not a large lore dump, or at least make it an interesting one.
the races are supposed to all have their goals and motivations, sometimes even the 'good' races might disagree, politically or even in war. this could give way for 'evil' to eventually attack in weakness or even make the story more complex by adding multiple sides to each bit here. not all dwarves would like elves but some wish peace because they live near elvish borders or trade with them often. war would destroy their income or risk them being attacked, for example.
overall: it seems the more basic or lower-tier stories do not really see the dynamic of the world and how to make it interesting both in the macro- and micro-scale
I know I commented this already but Sarah Monettes The Gobline Emperor. Goblins and Elves are two, complex races rather than the stereotypes of angels and slobbering little monsters. It’s about a half-goblin half-elf who is the youngest born of the emperor who dies, and he has to take the throne.
Tropes are easy. Subverting Tropes are also easy, since you just take the trope and reverse it.
"Instead of inventing new ones, reinvent the current ones, their history, dive deeper into their culture and show things that many do not know." --- That is a good idea, but hard and requiring work, and alas people are very lazy. :(
As an author, when you said you wanted five new fantasy races I literally cried out in terror. That seems like a very high bar. I took Tolkien's idea of elves and mashed it up with Herbert's Fremen, tossed in some salt from my experience as a cop and viola! Something new? I don't know, I hope so. Five new, custom races just scares the crap out of me.
I agree with you about prose. I like it when authors elevate their prose and Tolkein is the master, for me anyway. I find that if I try to make the language pretty I tend to fail, but if I let the work lead me to those places in the story that need elevated prose I think it turns out pretty good. I also consider the character with whom I am working on at the point. I try to give them different voices in the text.
I love Tolkien. My book is Tolkienesque and I don't apologize for that. It has other aspects to it as well. I love other authors too, like Herbert.
I'm rambling. The coffee is not working. Sorry. Good video btw
The way I get prose to flow is to give a running commentary mixed with free association and just blather for a bit. Then, when I begin to wane, I either go do something else, sleep, or just immediately go over my work and rip it apart and put it back together like a Frankenstein's monster. Much like the monster, it often turns out all the more beautiful and powerful for the atrocity I've performed upon it.
Often, making prose pretty is a matter of finding complementary chunks of flesh and sinew to wrap around solid bones rather than a matter of exploiting & divorcing imperfections in & from stone. Rare is the statue prettier for grafting, but rare is the written word so unique that it won't take a graft. Sometimes all you can save of your children is a scrap of flesh or a few bones and itself then becomes a graft; That is a major PITA I tell you what. Nothing like spending hours bleeding out paragraphs only to be left with what amounts to "The *thing* did the *thing* like a *thing*".
Steven Erickson
I'll help you come up with 4 other races
You want:
Bird men
Fish men
Cow men
Badger men
yeah... 5 new *unique* fantasy races? not easy. I'm attempting to make a good, high fantasy book, hopefully something that can at least bring Tolkien level worldbuilding to mind. I only have one other fantasy race.
@@basmbee4325 Focus on their role in the story. You can then take associations with that role and pull from such associations for traits. Guess what roles your story needs and create the races around that. What features are necessary? Humanoid or no? What traits do I want these people to embody? Multiple roles or one hat? Making a race is like making a character in this way, though I would argue less constrained. The lack of boundaries can definitely make races more difficult than individuals.
Example of thought process.
Role: Haughty but noble character---------------------------
Eagles/raptors are noble.
Flashy clothes with little jewelry gives the impression of opulence without overindulgence. Furs are traditional, but is bird so feathers? Remember birds can see colors humans can't, so may look very strange to others, bland or clashing.
Carnivorous and territorial, make all raptors either lords of territory, direct servants, or adventurers seeking territory. Small levies, no standing army, but vicious and skilled.
As non-mammalians give alien customs, friendly when properly plied with offerings, shiny baubles of any stripe or specially prepped meat a la shrike style kabob. Otherwise, casually violent and willing to maim over slight grievances. Give them "the eye" and they will be happy to take it. Friends give offerings, enemies ARE offerings.
Highly empathic, able to notice injury or discomfort at a glance, but generally merciless with all but those they would die for.
Birdbrain, cunning and inventive, good problem solving, but lacking in common sense and "flighty" or overly curious, easily distracted. Prone to OCD and ADHD. Generally fidgety when not occupied.------------------
I would love to hear about your race and process.
Him: I miss discovering 5 new fantasy races
Me and my half fish, half human elves: 👁️👄👁️
My lizard people and a bunch of "faes" I can't even figure out what to do with them yet: AAAAAAAAA
Also sapient dragons with cultural groups
ah, i have found my people.
me, with my half-giant elemental constructs, demon-looking people whose only internal organ is one big lung and whose spit is acidic, bug vampires and one deer with 4 pairs of eyes, no mouth, two pairs of wings that's bigger than mt. everest could hope to be in its wildest dreams.
My humanoid moth species that hosts other moths in their lungs, my water bending naturally camouflaged elf species, finned rats, tailed humanoids that live surrounded by packs of random creatures they collect and sustain through magic, seventeen different types of wizards who are all called wizards by nonwizards with no distinction between them despite how much this frustrates the actual wizards, major danger to the eco system harpies, lightning breathing miniature dragons, and lemur hawks: aha, mother! Actually start writing this book! The people will enjoy us!
@@mothalorah9704 we wilding out here
@@saltations_ okay but elves are so cool I love new twists on them and who can resist tiny dragons and lemurs with wings? Also please describe your fish elves they sound so cool-
I like seeing characters deal with real situations and how they react to them. I especially like characters making a mistake where you think you could also have made that mistake. Or most importantly actions having consequences
I recently started a series that contained the line "Each one of their stories were like a story." when doing introductions. Like I totally get they were going for a comparison to heroic origins common among children's tales but that was a rough one.
A friend of mine was so focused on beautiful prose that he forgot to use it to tell a good story
Daniel: rips on everyone making books about dragons
Me, who's first book is literally called "The Black Dragon": *monkey puppet glancing back meme*
definitely far from the most creative title... Im sure the book is cool though 😁
I wrote a bad thing when I was 7 called the black dragon
6 years later and I’m writing high fantasy political allegory
My early writing sucked and I’m very proud of how far ive come from that XD
Just be aware that something being black equals bad is a stereotype that comes from white supremacy. Not saying you should change your book or title, just be aware of the implications when you do this.
@@flavorblastedg7231 good thing that the protagonist is the black dragon 🙃
@@flavorblastedg7231 I find it quite interesting that I only stated the title of the book and your mind immediately went to "black thing = bad"
If anything, it seems like you've some unconscious biases you should examine before condescendingly preaching to other people you snarky prick
6:32 this entire section I was thinking "stormlight archive shatters this."
Fantastical races include: Aimians, Sleepless, The Singers... even the more "human" races have way different cultures. Alethi and Shin for example.
Finally someone did read that.
In fairness the Stormlight Archive is one of the best fantasy series of the last 50 years.
Yeah, demanding someone be like Tolkein or Sanderson is like being mad wr don't have more Leonardo Da Vincis just wandering around.
The skillset needed to world build, design an engaging plot, *and* write it well enough for people to read it, is asking a lot. A LOT.
It's hard enough to write a good plot without having to come up with different species, magic system, etc.
But now we also have to deal with worrying if it's too similar to something else. Yeah. It's a lot.
Also, Unless you have something that sparks you, you won't have the energy for it even if you have the skills.
Lighthearted stories with happy endings and villains who are villains just because they're awful people and they want to be that way are things I'd like to see more of. I turn to fantasy stories because the real world sucks and I want to forget about that from time to time and I occasionally want to see genuinely terrible people get what's coming to them.
Villains who're villains to be villains aren't that great to be honest
They should be villains for a reason like they want to conquer the world
They can still do "evil" things like causing suffering for no other reason that they want to, but their main goal should always be motivated by something decent (hopefully not a sad annoying backstory when they should have just gone to therapy, though properly made sad backstories are fine), like the desire to conquer the world
Perhaps they want to create a forest of impaled corpses, that seems fun and could create a lot of conflict within
I believe it to be what you meant but I can't read minds
Whenever I hear this argument for escapism => simplistic characters and motivation, I just scoff. What you really do not want is current real life problem analogies in fiction or at most you don't want any moral and ideological conflict that make you think pretentious questions.
You never ever ever want characters who just are what they are because. You cannot relate to that. Every single time that happens people criticize it and don't like it.
Don't try to achieve escapism through dumbing down your characters, but by making things optimistic and positive. Instead of killing the villain, maybe salvage them. That requires you to write a salvagable villain which is the opposite of simple.
Well, I've been planning a novel series for the past eight years and what you just described is largely what I'm planning. It is more complex than all that, but the point is, I'm trying something "new" by going back to a lot of old traditional tropes that we don't really see these days.
If I ever become famous as I want so badly, know that my books are for people like you and that you played a role in helping me to not give up!
@@warrioroflight6872 best of luck to you! I'd love to read your stories some day!
@@tuluppampam
Yeah, I understand what you mean. A lot of people seem to forget that villains that simply don't have any good intentions are perfectly realistic and are very capable of being interesting characters. It's just that we've seen it done badly enough times that people think it's not a good trope, even though the Joker is one of the most famous and beloved villains in all of fiction even though he knows he's the bad guy and just doesn't care.
Also, as a sidenote, one of my villains is specifically meant to be just plain selfish. While his political faction believes that they are a force for good despite all the death and misery they cause, he can actually see the system for what it is and is loyal to it for no reason other than the fact that he knows that it gives him an endless supply of luxury, women, and blood.
As someone who is writing a high fantasy novel, it made me incredibly happy to hear that there are people who still enjoy high fantasy :)
Has anyone else noticed that books today also have many more typos? It drives me up the wall. Edit!!!!
*Watches video, fearful that my book is falling into these tropes.*
*Remembers that I was already probably a hack and it doesnt matter as long as I do my best.*
*???*
*Profit*
Sander Bregman Just make a story that you feel is worth telling and you won’t be a hack. Hacks put little effort and care into their stories. Worry about making it a story that will evoke the right emotions you want it to, even if it has a lot of tropes.
@@joshuapowell6822 Oh yeah that's the plan! I'm writing the book I want to read and focusing on enjoying the process and creating something I care about. It's just that doubting my work and pushing through it is an integral part of my process lol
Sander Bregman Everyone has their own methods. I just tend to come up with ideas randomly, develop them, and then gather them all up and see how I can fit it all together. The number of ideas I’ve come up with while reading about history and listening to music is kind of terrifying.
Watch "terrible writing advice"! Best channel to learn how to write sff
@@cyrlav7748 Sweet! I'll check it out. Currently listening to a lot of the writing excuses podcast
When you mentioned repetitive word choice and structure, I completely agree that this happens fairly often. Song of Achilles did that and I got bored really fast because of it.
On the race part. I heavily agree, and it's why in my WIP I've been keen on developing my own fantasy races, or if I'm doing on a spin on old favourites (werewolves, Vampires and mermaids come to mind for my wip) I'm very much developing my own cultures for them, Backstories and rivalries. I love worldbuilding, and fantasy is my favourite sandbox to play in.
To the fantasy not being driven by fantasy, if you ever read this you'll be glad to hear thats the entire reason my story is happening, but it is also incredibly character driven at the very same time.
I wish we saw more magic being done in a unique way rather than just "Ooooh look it's magic". It kind of loses that sense of wonder when there's nothing different about it when compared to other books
Gimme stuff like Magecraft from the Nasuverse
Gimme the trope "Magic A is Magic A."
Hell, I'm trying to work out the details of my own, and two things I'm going for is elemental affinities and how different regions have different styles of spells, foci, etc...
E.g., A lot of Japanese-origin magic is rather heavily based around the use of talismans as a focus. Nordic-origin is more likely to use runes.
A lot of Indian-orign spells revolve around the enhancement of a ranged weapon so that it has a unique effect upon impact. (See the Hindu Astras.)
The whole "big floating magic circle" style really only came to be in the late 20th century.
Really glad you brought up WoK as an exception to the worldbuilding/races and lore and a cultural focus critique because Sanderson's worldbuilding singlehandedly got me into fantasy novels
I’m so tired of abusive relationships being normalised and romanticised especially in fantasy. It seems like every book relationship, even many friendships, are not considered how non-fic one’s are and nuance just disappears and toxic tropes are expected
Ahem coolen hoover ahem
Am i going crazy? Incels, Harems, Incest, Polygamy, 5000 year old lolis and its variants are still bad right? But nowadays more and more people advertise stuff with them and more importantly: if i call out those things in Something im the bad guy
@@loturzelrestaurant
On one hand, difference between fiction and reality, people liking certain tropes in fiction because of them being fictional and not something they experience IRL, yadda, yadda.
On the other hand, it really sucks if you don't like that kind of thing in your fiction and fiction and reality DO influence each other to some degree.
But I don't think it's really a recent phenomenon, toxic romance has existed since there was romance and so did harems etc. A lot of victorian writing really liked their women frail and helpless and that was considered very sexy in fiction...
The exact trends change, but romance about things that would be deeply fucked up in real life is nothing new.
Honestly, so long as they blatantly advertise "Hey, this fiction contains this kind of kinky stuff" I don't have much of a problem with it, the problem really arises when it sneaks up on you and 300 pages into a book you're hit over the head with a toxic codependent romance you really were not looking for.